Perhaps he is seriously unstable now, as some have suggested. Power does bring a certain madness to its prodigious abusers, especially those of shallow disposition. In The March of Folly: from Troy to Vietnam, the great American historian Barbara Tuchman described Lyndon B Johnson, the president whose insane policies took him across his Rubicon in Vietnam. "He lacked [John] Kennedy's ambivalence, born of a certain historical sense and at least some capacity for reflective thinking," she wrote. "Forceful and domineering, a man infatuated with himself, Johnson was affected in his conduct of Vietnam policy by three elements in his character: an ego that was insatiable and never secure; a bottomless capacity to use and impose the powers of his office without inhibition; a profound aversion, once fixed upon a course of action, to any contradictions."

That, demonstrably, is Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the cabal that has seized power in Washington. But there is a logic to their idiocy - the goal of dominance. It also describes Blair, for whom the only logic is vainglorious. And now he is threatening to take Britain into the nightmare on offer in Iran. His Washington mentors are unlikely to ask for British troops, not yet. At first, they will prefer to bomb from a safe height, as Bill Clinton did in his destruction of Yugoslavia. They are aware that, like the Serbs, the Iranians are a serious people with a history of defending themselves and who are not stricken by the effects of a long siege, as the Iraqis were in 2003. When the Iranian defence minister promises "a crushing response", you sense he means it.

Listen to Blair in the House of Commons: "It's important we send a signal of strength" against a regime that has "forsaken diplomacy" and is "exporting terrorism" and "flouting its international obligations". Coming from one who has exported terrorism to Iran's neighbour, scandalously reneged on Britain's most sacred international obligations and forsaken diplomacy for brute force, these are Alice-through-the-looking-glass words.

However, they begin to make sense when you read Blair's Commons speeches on Iraq of 25 February and 18 March 2003. In both crucial debates - the latter leading to the disastrous vote on the invasion - he used the same or similar expressions to lie that he remained committed to a peaceful resolution. "Even now, today, we are offering Saddam the prospect of voluntary disarmament . . ." he said. From the revelations in Philippe Sands's book Lawless World, the scale of his deception is clear. On 31 January 2003, Bush and Blair confirmed their earlier secret decision to attack Iraq.

Like the invasion of Iraq, an attack on Iran has a secret agenda that has nothing to do with the Tehran regime's imaginary weapons of mass destruction. That Washington has managed to coerce enough members of the International Atomic Energy Agency into participating in a diplomatic charade is no more than reminiscent of the way it intimidated and bribed the "international community" into attacking Iraq in 1991.

Iran offers no "nuclear threat". There is not the slightest evidence that it has the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium to weapons-grade material. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has repeatedly said his inspectors have found nothing to support American and Israeli claims. Iran has done nothing illegal; it has demonstrated no territorial ambitions nor has it engaged in the occupation of a foreign country - unlike the United States, Britain and Israel. It has complied with its obligations under the on-Proliferation Treaty to allow inspectors to "go anywhere and see anything" - unlike the US and Israel. The latter has refused to recognise the NPT, and has between 200 and 500 thermonuclear weapons targeted at Iran and other Middle Eastern states.

Those who flout the rules of the NPT are America's and Britain's anointed friends. Both India and Pakistan have developed their nuclear weapons secretly and in defiance of the treaty. The Pakistani military dictatorship has openly exported its nuclear technology. In Iran's case, the excuse that the Bush regime has seized upon is the suspension of purely voluntary "confidence-building" measures that Iran agreed with Britain, France and Germany in order to placate the US and show that it was "above suspicion". Seals were placed on nuclear equipment following a concession given, some say foolishly, by Iranian negotiators and which had nothing to do with Iran's obligations under the NPT.

Iran has since claimed back its "inalienable right" under the terms of the NPT to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. There is no doubt this decision reflects the ferment of political life in Tehran and the tension between radical and conciliatory forces, of which the bellicose new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is but one voice. As European governments seemed to grasp for a while, this demands true diplomacy, especially given the history.

For more than half a century, Britain and the US have menaced Iran. In 1953, the CIA and MI6 overthrew the democratic government of Muhammed Mossadeq, an inspired nationalist who believed that Iranian oil belonged to Iran. They installed the venal shah and, through a monstrous creation called Savak, built one of the most vicious police states of the modern era. The Islamic revolution in 1979 was inevitable and very nasty, yet it was not monolithic and, through popular pressure and movement from within the elite, Iran has begun to open to the outside world - in spite of having sustained an invasion by Saddam Hussein, who was encouraged and backed by the US and Britain.

At the same time, Iran has lived with the real threat of an Israeli attack, possibly with nuclear weapons, about which the "international community" has remained silent. Recently, one of Israel's leading military historians, Martin van Creveld, wrote: "Obviously, we don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons and I don't know if they're developing them, but if they're not developing them, they're crazy."

It is hardly surprising that the Tehran regime has drawn the "lesson" of how North Korea, which has nuclear weapons, has successfully seen off the American predator without firing a shot. During the cold war, British "nuclear deterrent" strategists argued the same justification for arming the nation with nuclear weapons; the Russians were coming, they said. As we are aware from declassified files, this was fiction, unlike the prospect of an American attack on Iran, which is very real and probably imminent.

Blair knows this. He also knows the real reasons for an attack and the part Britain is likely to play. Next month, Iran is scheduled to shift its petrodollars into a euro-based bourse. The effect on the value of the dollar will be significant, if not, in the long term, disastrous. At present the dollar is, on paper, a worthless currency bearing the burden of a national debt exceeding $8trn and a trade deficit of more than $600bn. The cost of the Iraq adventure alone, according to the Nobel Prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz, could be $2trn. America's military empire, with its wars and 700-plus bases and limitless intrigues, is funded by creditors in Asia, principally China.

That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency. What the Bush regime fears is not Iran's nuclear ambitions but the effect of the world's fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking the dollar monopoly. Will the world's central banks then begin to shift their reserve holdings and, in effect, dump the dollar? Saddam Hussein was threatening to do the same when he was attacked.

While the Pentagon has no plans to occupy all of Iran, it has in its sights a strip of land that runs along the border with Iraq. This is Khuzestan, home to 90 per cent of Iran's oil. "The first step taken by an invading force," reported Beirut's Daily Star, "would be to occupy Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan Province, securing the sensitive Straits of Hormuz and cutting off the Iranian military's oil supply." On 28 January the Iranian government said that it had evidence of British undercover attacks in Khuzestan, including bombings, over the past year. Will the newly emboldened Labour MPs pursue this? Will they ask what the British army based in nearby Basra - notably the SAS - will do if or when Bush begins bombing Iran? With control of the oil of Khuzestan and Iraq and, by proxy, Saudi Arabia, the US will have what Richard Nixon called "the greatest prize of all".

But what of Iran's promise of "a crushing response"? Last year, the Pentagon delivered 500 "bunker-busting" bombs to Israel. Will the Israelis use them against a desperate Iran? Bush's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review cites "pre-emptive" attack with so-called low-yield nuclear weapons as an option. Will the militarists in Washington use them, if only to demonstrate to the rest of us that, regardless of their problems with Iraq, they are able to "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major-theatre wars", as they have boasted? That a British prime minister should collude with even a modicum of this insanity is cause for urgent action on this side of the Atlantic.

With thanks to Mike Whitney. John Pilger's new book, Freedom Next Time, will be published by Bantam Press in June

First published in the New Statesman

Commenting on the Muslim riots sweeping the Middle East and Europe, Zhirinovsky said that the publication of the offensive cartoons was a planned psyop on the part of the US and aimed to “provoke a row between Europe and the Islamic world”.

“It will all end with European countries thanking the United States and paying, and giving soldiers,” said Zhirinovsky.

The possible inorganic manufactured nature of the riots has to be seriously considered. The three most offensive cartoons that caused the outrage were not even printed in the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper but were added in and handed out by Danish imams who “circulated the images to brethren in Muslim countries,” according to the London Telegraph.

It also appears highly suspicious that Muslims in Gaza City and other places had gained access to a plentiful supply of Danish flags to burn in front of the waiting world media as soon as the controversy broke out.

It now comes to light that Merete Eldrup, managing director of JP/Politikens Hus, the company that published the cartoons, is the wife of Anders Eldrup. Anders Eldrup is a Bilderberg member who has attended the last five Bilderberg meetings. The Bilderberg Group is a shadowy organization that meets once a year to steer global policy. It is now widely acknowledged that Bilderberg set the date for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The violent demonstrations, on the back of last November's French riots, are clearly having the effect of hardening European sympathy towards Muslims, even as the governments of major European countries open the floodgates to mass immigration. This greases the skids for an accelerated invasion of Iran who yesterday announced they were cutting trade with Denmark over the offensive cartoons.

Director of the Russian Political Research Institute Sergei Markov previously warned that Israel was likely to conduct air strikes against Iran in the spring.

The window of opportunity seems to be forming for the US and Israel. The White House meeting memo proves that UN consultations and possible sanctions are mere window dressing for a plan of action that has already been decided upon. What remains to be seen is if the US or Israel will attempt to manufacture a staged war provocation to goad the Iranians into signing their own death warrant. The memo, released by QC Philippe Sands, contained details of a discussion between Tony Blair and George Bush where a plan to paint a US spy plane in UN colors and fly it low over Iraq in the hope that Saddam would order it shot down was debated.

On Tuesday, Tony Blair said using force against Iran was "not on our agenda".

Iran has said it will no longer allow snap inspections of its nuclear sites, after the UN nuclear atomic voted to report it to the Security Council.

'Peaceful means'

On Tuesday, Mr Blair told the Commons liaison committee Tehran was making "a very, very serious mistake" if it thought the international community would allow it to develop nuclear weapons.

But he said the issue could be dealt with by "peaceful and diplomatic means".

Opening a House of Lords debate, Lord Hurd said: "I don't think we can realistically and forever rule out the use of force.

"If the regime in Iran or its successor moved from words and piled up an unmistakeable danger then I don't think we can entirely rule out the use of force.

"But we shouldn't deceive ourselves than we can have some sort of strike without a war, or some sort of war that doesn't involve huge dangers and many, many thousands of casualties."

Lord Hurd added: "We have chosen to station our troops, whether in southern Iraq or southern Afghanistan, in very modest numbers where we are uniquely vulnerable to retaliation from nearby Iran."

He later told the BBc there was no such thing as a "surgical strike against a nuclear installation" because the country attacked would be likely to retaliate.

Iran, a "proud and ancient nation", had to be offered incentives to comply with international wishes, Lord Hurd added.

Bush's phrasing, with its overtones of Israeli dependency, departed from the language of past U.S. pledges that focused on preserving Israel's military superiority over Middle East foes. Given U.S. efforts to curb Iran's nuclear plans through international diplomacy, experts say Israel will have to shelve any plans for region-rattling, go-it-alone missions like its 1981 bombing sortie against Iraq's atomic reactor at Osiraq.

This thinking is bolstered by the Bush pledge's echoes of Cold War pacts -- NATO in Europe, the "nuclear umbrella" over Japan -- which defended U.S. allies against the Soviets while obligating them to get Washington's nod for any military moves.

"In political life there are no free lunches, and Bush's statements have a price. They remove the possibility -- if there ever was one -- of Israel taking matters into its own hands," wrote Aluf Benn, diplomatic correspondent for the influential Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

"The decision if and when to act against Iran will be made in the White House, not in the underground headquarters of the (Israeli military command) General Staff."

A senior Israeli official, who asked not to be named, acknowledged that Bush's pledge took bilateral ties to "a new level", but said Israel had not promised anything in return.

Asked if Israel was considering military action on Iran, he said: "Our policy is to follow the U.S. lead in this matter."

Iran says its nuclear programme is for energy, not arms.

According to Benn, the U.S. deal has already ushered in a rhetorical restraint among Israeli officials who had previously refused to rule out an Osiraq-style operation against Iran.

So guided, Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expunged mention of Iran from a recent major policy speech, Benn said.

LOGIC OF LIMITATION

Such reticence carries no great price for Israel, whose past veiled threats on Iran had rung hollow to many defence experts.

Unlike Saddam-era Iraq, Iran has numerous, dispersed and fortified nuclear sites -- a challenge perhaps beyond the means of Israel's military, and which only U.S. forces could handle.

"This (Bush's pledge) is a landmark bit of phrasing which I am sure was at least partly calculated," said Patrick Cronin of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

But he added that an agreement by Israel to forgo unilateral action on Iran "would not cost a lot, as while tactically (Israeli) military options are not nil, they are close to nil".

Weighed against such assessments are experts like David Ivry, the former Israeli air force chief who masterminded the Osiraq strike. He argues that even limited attacks on Iran's nuclear programme could be enough to set it back by years. "Launching such an action is a matter of Israel setting a 'red line' for when the threat posed by Iran is unbearable and, when it is crossed, giving the order," Ivry said.

Asked whether, in light of Bush's pledge, Israel would have to at least coordinate any military operation with its U.S. ally, Ivry said he thought it unlikely. "Coordinating would mean, essentially, asking for permission," he said.

David Hartwell, editor of Jane's Country Risk, disagreed.

"The strategic situation with today's Iran is not what it was with Iraq in 1981," he said. "U.S. policy in the region would be seriously undermined by an independent Israeli action."

While he noted that the U.S.-Israeli understandings had yet to be ratified like the defence pacts of the Cold War, Hartwell saw them as similarly circumscribing future actions by Israel.

"The assumption is that the provision of a nuclear umbrella means you forgo a certain amount of defensive action," he said.

Historical precedent suggests Israel could eventually, under an upgraded U.S. alliance, come clean on an atomic arsenal it has never confirmed having, and even agree to limitations on it.

In the 1960s, France pursued a nuclear programme in part because President Charles De Gaulle said he did not want to rely on U.S. protection from the Soviets. By submitting to a U.S. umbrella, some see Israel being drawn in the opposite direction.

"Part of the American strategy now may be to provide a nuclear umbrella to the Israelis, with the hope being that, one day, they disarm," Hartwell said.

Israeli officials, while maintaining a policy of ambiguity over the country's nuclear capabilities, have ruled out any open review of it in the absence of comprehensive Middle East peace.

"If Iran's case is referred or reported to the Security Council ... Iran's cooperation will decrease," top national security official Ali Larijani told a news conference.

"The government will be obliged to remove suspensions, which includes industrial-scale enrichment, and it will do so," he said, asserting that a massive enrichment plant at Natanz in central Iran was "ready for operation".

"Inspections will be restricted. They will not have the right to go to military sites which we had so far allowed them to go to. Some of their cameras will be taken down," Larijani said of the now three-year-old International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation of the country.

Iran says it only wants to enrich uranium to make reactor fuel, but the process can be extended to make weapons-grade material. Tehran prompted the current crisis by resuming enrichment research on January 10.

The warnings came as world powers including Russia agreed on a draft IAEA resolution that would report Iran to the Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions.

The Vienna-based IAEA's 35-nation board is to consider the resolution on Thursday.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Iran should "see this agreed position by the leaders of the international community not as a threat but as ... a final opportunity for Iran to put itself back on track".

But Larijani said Iran "does not see any rationale to stop nuclear fuel research, even for one day" -- ruling out the one move that could save it from ending up in New York.

"Those who possess stocks of nuclear arms meet together and take decisions and think that the Iranian people will submit to their decisions," Ahmadinejad fumed earlier in a speech in the south of the country.

"Our people will not bow to a few tyrannical countries who think they are the whole world," said Ahmadinejad, accusing world powers of treating Iranians like "a second-rate people with no culture".

He also lashed out at US President George W. Bush, who in his State of the Union address branded the Islamic republic "a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people".

"You who support the Zionist puppet regime, you who support the destruction of Palestinian homes, you have no right to talk about liberty or human rights," shouted Ahmadinejad, who has already called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" or moved as far away as Alaska.

"God willing, in the near future we will judge you in a people's tribunal," he said of Bush.

Larijani also appeared to be bracing for an escalation of the crisis, saying Iran was no longer even insisting on having more time for negotiation "because we have prepared ourselves for another scenario".

He said his talks earlier Wednesday with Russian and Chinese deputy foreign ministers also failed to bear fruit: "They had a point of view on solving the issue, but we had a different point of view."

"The last time they talked of sanctions, the price of oil increased," he said of the threat of tough UN action, adding: "Do not play with the national pride of Iranians. The situation will change and your interests in the region will be in danger."

In recent weeks Iran has been brandishing its close links with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah and firebrand Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.

"Any aggression against Iran's peaceful nuclear installations will receive an extremely quick and destructive response from the armed forces," Iran's Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar also warned.

The warning came just days after the head of the Revolutionary Guards also issued a reminder that Iran had ballistic missiles capable of hitting Israel and US bases in the region.

Iran claims it is cooperating fully with an IAEA investigation, although the latest IAEA report shows Tehran refusing to give agency inspectors all the information or interviews they want and possessing a document whose only use would be in making nuclear weapons.

Larijani played down the importance of the document, saying it "can be found on the Internet".

Washington accuses Iran of trying to build a nuclear weapon under the cover of a civilian atomic energy programme -- a charge vehemently denied by Tehran.

Mashaee reiterated Thursday that Tehran only possessed "nuclear technology" and did not own nuclear weapons.

"Therefore, what can they attack in Iran? What we have are not nuclear weapons but instead nuclear technology and science. Science cannot be destroyed by Western weapons," Mashaee said in Farsi through an Iranian interpreter.

The Iranian nuclear crisis escalated last week when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted to report the Islamic republic to the United Nations Security Council over its nuclear programme.

Iran said on Monday that large-scale uranium enrichment work would begin in "due course" in response to the IAEA decision.

Mashaee described Rumsfeld as "Dracula" and said threats of military action against Iran "are all lies and mere tough words."

He said Tehran has always "clearly" shown that "all of Iran's nuclear actions and activity are for peaceful means."

The top Iranian official has travelled to Indonesia for meetings with Vice President Yusuf Kalla, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and others although the issues being discussed are unclear.

Kalla said Indonesia opposed any military action against Iran based simply on suspicion that Tehran was attempting to acquire nuclear weapons.

Jakarta abstained during last week's vote by IAEA board members in Vienna to report Iran to the UN Security Council.

Senior Iranian officials have warned that a referral to the council would bring "an end to diplomacy" as well as tough international inspections.

Earlier China said it welcomed nuclear talks between Iran and Russia planned for next week to defuse a crisis over Tehran's atomic programme.

"We hope that this Russian invitation to Iran to hold talks on the 16th about participating in an international uranium enrichment centre will help break, or encourage a break, in the current stalemate over the Iranian nuclear issue," Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told a regular news conference.

The deputy head of Iran's National Security Council would lead Tehran's delegation to the talks in Moscow next week, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reported earlier.

"We concluded a contract for the supply of air-defence systems to Iran and there is no reason not to fulfil it," Mikhail Dmitriyev, the head of Russia's military-technical cooperation agency, said.

Worth an estimated $700 million, the deal for up to 30 Tor M-1 surface-to-air missiles is the largest since Russia in 2000 withdrew from an agreement with the US restricting the supply of military hardware to Iran.

Dmitriyev rejected media reports that talks were underway for the additional supply of heavier S-300 air-defence missiles.

Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov has stressed that the Tor is a defensive system and that the sale does not violate Russia's international obligations.

Parallels abound:

* Ahmadinejad's administration, helped by the United States and the EU, has managed to isolate Iran internationally. Only three countries, all third and fourth rate powers, voted against the IAEA reporting of Iran to the Security Council. Iraq experienced a similar isolation in the period ending with war.
* Clamp down on internal opposition is on the increase, and the IRI is becoming increasingly a univocal system. Autocracy was also in full swing in Iraq before the war.
* Iranian dissidents feed their selective information and analyses into government agencies and powerful think tanks in DC, and get coverage from major networks. This is reminiscent of the role of Ahmad Chalabi and his cohorts in convincing America before its invasion of Iraq.

* Ahmadinejad sounds increasingly defiant. For example, in a recent speech, ridiculing the IAEA resolution, he said the resolution was meant to open the Iranian military sites to the Western spies for an estimate of the country's military capability (which might be true). The tenor of these intransigent statements is similar to the Iraqi communiqués in the last three years before the war.
* Ahmadinejad and his supporters talk frequently about their strategic strength in the Middle East. They feel they have the majority of Muslims behind them. They tend to forget that during the heydays of the revolution, with the exception of arms smugglers, Iranians had no allies in their war against Iraq. They ignore the fact that Iranians are Persian Shi'ites, and Sunni Arabs have never taken them into fellowship of Muslims. As of today, all Arabs including Syria take Iran for an imperialistic power in the Persian Gulf, which has illegally seized three islands from the Arabs. Iran at best is perceived as a rival (if not an enemy and aggressor) by its neighbors, and its decline will make them more happy than sad.
* Ahmadinejad's anti-Israeli rhetoric might have been intended to gain support from the Muslim masses, which indeed might have. However, aside from some demonstrations and embassy burnings, gaining active support from the Islamists in the region in a likely war against Iran is a different matter altogether. Balance of forces in the region is such that even the most radical groups are busy establishing a foothold in their own national politics. For example, both Hamas and the Iraqi Shi'ite leadership, the two allies that paid homage to Ahmadinejad recently, are hard at work to benefit from the democracy game in their home countries. Hamas is trying to form a government and would need financial and political support from the West. The Iraqi Shi'ites are also enjoying the lion's share of the state in Iraq and would need the backing of the U.S. forces for some times to come. The only remaining force is Hezballah of Lebanon, who has proved to be quite reasonable and calculating at the times of risk and danger. It seems that Iranians are making the same miscalculation as Saddam, who counted on the support from the Arab nationalists, a support that never materialized.
* Ahmadinejad and some of the military leaders refer to the "lightening speed" and retaliatory power of the Iranian military. The reference is most probably to Iran's large stockpile of Shahab III. Saddam and his military leaders also talked with the same hyperbolical language about their "secret" weapons before the war.
* On the other hand, the purported Iranian military strategy of sinking ships at the mouth of Persian Gulf and attacking Israel with Shahab III barrages, will definitely backfire and damages Iran the most. Those who advocate such strategy conveniently forget that this will primarily cut off Iran from the rest of the world, and hamper its oil exports. A stoppage of gasoline import alone would create massive unemployment and shortages, and a total halt of traffic and transportation in a country with little public transit capability. Sadly, this echoes the "scorched-earth" strategy of Saddam, and his exaggerated estimate of his military power.
* Ahmadinejad seems to be out of touch with reality at times. For example, he said, and later denied, that he was surrounded by a "halo" at the UN meeting. Ahmadinejad in this respect is closer to the former Iraqi Information Minister Muhammad Saeed al-Sahaf, than to Saddam himself. However, a Tariq Aziz is missing in his administration. A few days before the war, Aziz said realistically that only a "miracle" could save Iraq from war. Nobody has said that yet in Iran, possibly because they have the emissary of God among them, and he can stop a likely confrontation by a decree at the eleventh hour. May be this is the assigned role of the Supreme Leader who has lately been uncharacteristically silent. He can invoke the "expediency" principle and embrace the IAEA resolution. The late Ayatollah Khomeini surprised everyone when he accepted the UN resolution 598 for a ceasefire with Iraq. This time though accepting the resolution of the IAEA might prove to be more difficult. It could lead to other demands such as elimination of delivery systems capable of carrying nuclear weapons (such as Shahab III); a clause already embedded in the IAEA resolution. Such a demand of course would meet resistance from Iranians, and make the emulation of Ayatollah Khomeini's act of drinking "the challis of poison" even harder, and a compromise less reachable.

About the author: The author is the professor of sociology of development at Strayer University, Washington DC. Nafisi contributes to the VOA, BBC, NPR, and the RFERL.

The meeting will discuss a Kremlin proposal to process fuel for Iran's nuclear stations on Russian soil, offering Tehran a way to pursue atomic power but restricting any moves to divert radioactive fuel to weapons.

Asked about Russian reports that China -- a country with close ties to both Moscow and Tehran -- may also attend, Kong said China had not received a formal invitation and he refused to say how China would respond if asked.

But he said China still hoped the nuclear standoff could be solved through "peaceful negotiation".

Tehran insists its nuclear programme is aimed at generating electricity, but the United States and European countries have said Iran is seeking the ability to make atomic weapons.

The United Nations' atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, voted on Saturday for its chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, to report by March 6 on Iran's response to demands that it suspend nuclear enrichment activities and improve cooperation with nuclear inspectors.

The agency may then consider moves to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

China is one of five permanent members of the Security Council that wields veto power over any decisions.

Beijing has repeatedly discouraged, but not flatly opposed, proposals from Washington and the European Union to refer Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions.

"We support all efforts beneficial to strengthening international nuclear non-proliferation mechanisms, and we hope the international community will reach unanimity on the relevant proposals", Kong said.