Iran Prepared for Dialog

"We are in favor of dialog. But in order for us to talk they are imposing a condition that would deprive us of our right," Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a public rally in Rasht, the capital of the northern Gilan province.

His comments come ahead of the expiration on Wednesday of the latest UN Security Council deadline for Iran to halt sensitive uranium enrichment work as well as a UN watchdog report Friday on its compliance with this demand.

"We say to them (the West): How can your enrichment factories continue to work when you are asking for a suspension of our activities?" he said in the speech broadcast on state television.

Ahmadinejad told the crowd of thousands the only scenario where Iran could halt enrichment was if other nuclear powers suspended the process themselves.

"If they say that our nuclear production plant and its fuel cycle should be shut down, this is no problem," he said. "But justice necessitates that those who want to negotiate should halt their own nuclear fuel cycles.

"The day that Iranians can use nuclear fuel and its production cycle fully in the agriculture, medicine and other areas, will be a big leap in the life of Iranian people," Ahmadinejad added. "If they think they can create division among Iranians with their bullying, attempts and plots, they should know they are 100-percent wrong. Iranians have been standing strong and will defend their nuclear rights until the end."

ElBaradei: six months away from enrichment

Iran's nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, was to meet Tuesday with the head of the UN atomic watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), before the agency releases a crucial report on the Iranian program on Friday.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in an interview in London's Financial Times published on Tuesday that Iran may be able to enrich uranium on a mass scale in just six months, although it could still be 10 years away from the capacity to build a nuclear bomb.

Iran has moved feedstock gas needed to start uranium enrichment into a nuclear plant designed for industrial-level enrichment, diplomats told AFP Monday.

Iran transferred the uranium gas (uranium hexafluoride, UF6) early this month from a conversion facility at Isfahan into the underground Natanz plant in central Iran where it last month started installing centrifuge machines, the diplomats said.

Provocative acts

While Iran has not started running the centrifuges, bringing the uranium gas into the plant was "provocative" act as this is "not the act of a country that seeks compromise," said non-proliferation analyst Mark Fitzpatrick from the London IISS think tank.

The United States accuses Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon, a charge denied by Tehran, which insists its atomic program is peaceful in nature.

Although Washington has said it wants the nuclear standoff resolved through diplomacy, it has never ruled out military action to thwart Iran's atomic drive.