Iran repeated Sunday that it would not halt its controversial uranium enrichment programme, despite renewed European efforts to coax the Islamic republic into agreeing to a suspension.
"Any offer to Iran must recognise the rights of Iran and guarantee the means to exercise those rights," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.
"We will not back down on our rights," he added.
EU powers Britain, France and Germany are trying to put together a new wide-ranging package of incentives in return for an Iranian moratorium on uranium enrichment activities, which the West suspects of being part of a covert atomic weapons programme.
For Iran, the right to nuclear technology means first and foremost its right to uranium enrichment, a highly sensitive process that can be used both for making nuclear fuel and in a weapons programme.
