Ali Akbar Javanfekr, media advisor to Ahmadinejad, also said that accepting the Islamic republic as a nuclear power was the "first step" towards normalising relations between Tehran, Washington and the West.

"Iran is a nuclear power. We won't accept any threats during the negotiations or even after. We want negotiations based on logic and international laws," Javanfekr said in an wide-ranging interview at his Tehran office late on Tuesday.

"They have to accept a nuclear Iran and have to negotiate with a nuclear Iran."

Iran and representatives of six world powers -- the United States, Britain, Russia, France, China and Germany -- are to meet on October 1, probably in Turkey, to discuss Tehran's proposals aimed at allaying concerns over its nuclear programme.

The United States, Israel, and other world powers suspect Tehran is making an atomic bomb under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme. The Islamic republic denies the charge.

The six powers -- known as the P5+1 -- had given Tehran a late September deadline for holding talks and had warned that a failure to do so would lead to further sanctions.

Iran is already under three sets of UN sanctions slapped for its refusal to abandon the sensitive uranium enrichment programme, the process which produces nuclear fuel or, in highly extended form, the fissile core of an atomic bomb.

Javanfekr said Iran's nuclear programme was in accordance with international laws.

"What we want is that they (world powers) respect our nuclear rights and also other rights," he said. "This can be the first step towards normalising relations with US and the West."

Javanfekr also reiterated what other top Iranian officials, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been saying -- Tehran will not negotiate over its nuclear programme during the talks on October 1.

"We have said negotiations will be based on our package and our package does not include Iran's nuclear programme. As our president has said the nuclear question is over," the softly-spoken official said.

Tehran's package attempts to address the issue of global nuclear disarmament but avoids mentioning its own atomic programme, including its uranium enrichment drive.

The key difference between Tehran's latest package and its May 2008 package is that the previous document showed Iran's willingess to form an international consortium to enrich uranium, but the updated version avoids talking of such a possibility.

"We have the technology and that is a reality which they have to accept," Javanfekr said, suggesting that Ahmadinejad's announcement earlier this year that Iran had mastered the nuclear fuel cycle was probably the reason Tehran now feels it unnecessary to be part of an international uranium consortium.

"The situation would have been different if we had not mastered this technology. They have to understand that we have made progress in other fields also and our progress has been fast," he added.

Earlier this year Iran announced it had sent its first domestically-built satellite, Omid (Hope), into orbit.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday that Iran must answer "head on" concerns about its nuclear programme during the October talks.

"We have made clear to the Iranians that any talks we participate in must address the nuclear issue head on. It cannot be ignored," Clinton said.

Javanfekr said Iran is ready to discuss with the P5+1 and "does not want any tensions with the world powers."

"But during the talks we will definitely speak of banning nuclear arms globally because it is not a problem for us as we do not possess any nuclear arms."

Javanfekr said Iran is ready to step up its cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"Our cooperation with the IAEA is of the highest level and we are ready for more cooperation," he said. Iran recently permitted IAEA inspectors to its heavy-water plant in Arak, located in the province of Markezi.

Javanfekr was also critical of Barack Obama, saying the US president had failed to change the American policy towards Iran.

"He only talks of change, but has done nothing concrete. He can release the Iranian money which America seized after the (Islamic) revolution or put an end to sanctions," he said.

Soon after the capture of US embassy in Iran by Islamist students in 1979, then US President Jimmy Carter ordered freezing of Iranian assets held in the US. Iran says the amount is worth around 10 billion dollars, but US officials claim it to be much less.

Obama has initiated several diplomatic overtures towards Iran to resolve the nuclear controversy as well as help ease the 30-year animosity between the two nations.

But Javanfekr, becoming visibly upset, said Obama missed a key opportunity by "not congratulating our president on his election victory."

earlier related report
Swift sanctions against Iran a 'serious mistake': Russia
Imposing swift additional sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme would be a "serious mistake," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.

"Today there is a real chance to conclude talks whose results should be an agreement restoring trust in the purely peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme," Lavrov said in televised remarks.

"Disrupting this chance by demanding swift imposition of sanctions would be a serious mistake," he added.

Iran is due to hold talks with six world powers over its nuclear programme on October 1, the outcome of which could determine whether the United States and its allies seek additional sanctions.

Lavrov reiterated Russia's stance that the international community should continue negotiations with Iran and warned that using military action to prevent Tehran from acquiring an atomic bomb would be "catastrophic."

"The problem of the Iranian nuclear programme can only be resolved through am all-embracing negotiated solution in a regional context, and not through force," Lavrov said.

"Attempts to use force would have catastrophic effect for the entire Middle East region," he said during a foreign policy address in Moscow.

The United States, the European Union and Israel fear that Iran is secretly building nuclear arms under the guise of its civilian nuclear power programme, but Tehran denies the charge and insists the programme is peaceful.

Washington and Jerusalem have never ruled out the option of air strikes to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities.

The United Nations Security Council has already imposed three sets of sanctions against Iran over its refusal to freeze its uranium enrichment activities which could be used to build an atomic bomb.

Russia, which is a permanent member of the UN Security Council as well as one of the six powers negotiating with Tehran, has long resisted calls for tougher sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear programme.

Russia is helping build Tehran's first civilian nuclear power plant in the southern Iranian city of Bushehr, and has reportedly agreed to sell its advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.

Deployment of the missiles around Iran's nuclear facilities would greatly enhance its defences against an air strike.

A top Israeli polician, Zeev Elkin, said in an interview published Thursday that delivery of the S-300s to Iran could compel the Jewish state to attack.

"The anti-aircraft missiles would greatly complicate or make impossible a military solution, and thus could push Israel to act much sooner than it would in the current conditions," Elkin, head of the Likud party's group in the Knesset, told Russia's Kommersant daily.

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