"Pressure and threats against Iran's nuclear programme will not affect Iran in any way," the student news agency ISNA quoted Ahmadinejad as telling an Iranian engineers' association meeting Saturday evening.

"Iran and its people will not be scared off their wishes and will continue on their path with determination," he said.

"The insistence by certain countries on a suspension (of uranium enrichment), even for a short period, is unlawful," the president said, taking up Iran's repeated insistence that it has a right to master the technology for peaceful ends under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Uranium enrichment lies at the heart of Western concerns over Iran's nuclear programme. The process can be used to make the fuel for civil reactors but in highly extended form can also produce the fissile core of an atom bomb.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely for civilian energy purposes, but arch-foe Israel and its US ally say they suspect the real aim is a covert weapons programme.

After four rounds of unsuccessful talks aimed at securing an enrichment suspension, the European Union is set to return the Iranian nuclear file to the UN Security Council Tuesday for possible enforcement action.

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