"We cannot support and will actively oppose any attempt to use the Security Council to punish Iran or to use Iran's nuclear program in order to promote the idea of regime change" in Tehran, Lavrov said in the transcript of an interview with the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA, released by the Russian foreign ministry.

Lavrov added that Russia regarded the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation as an "extremely serious" problem and called on Iran to respect international demands aimed at ensuring that its nuclear program posed no threat in this regard.

"We believe that the Iranian side must finally bow to the constructive proposals that have been made and fully cooperate with the IAEA to answer all currently outstanding questions" about its nuclear ambitions, Lavrov said.

The interview with Lavrov was conducted on Friday and the transcript was released by the foreign ministry as he held talks in Moscow with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who arrived in the Russian capital Saturday on the final stop of a trip focusing on the North Korea crisis.

The United States has accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a nuclear power program that is being developed with Russia's help. Tehran has consistently denied this charge, maintaining that the program is strictly for energy production, and therefore allowed by treaty.

Lavrov said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog agency, at present had no way of telling whether or not there was a military component to Iran's fledgling nuclear program.

At the same time however, IAEA experts still had several "serious questions" about Tehran's nuclear program, based on their own inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities, that Iranian nuclear negotiators had promised to answer fully.

"We firmly call on our Iranian colleagues to provide these answers as soon as possible," Lavrov said, stressing that it was Iranian nuclear negotiators themselves who had pledged to provide detailed clarifications on a number of points.

"But all this does not mean that the presence of a threat to peace and security can be confirmed. And it is only such a threat that can provide a basis for sanctions," he said.

Lavrov reiterated Russia's position that only IAEA nuclear inspectors had the expertise and the access to determine whether or not Iran's nuclear program did indeed pose a threat, and insisted this idea was at the core of the UN resolution on Iran adopted in July.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.