"We will resist the exorbitant demands of the great powers," Khatami was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA.

"What has happened in the past few days on the nuclear dossier is a sign of the moral decadence of the world and the pre-eminence of force and hypocrisy in international relations," he said.

The Iranian government's spokesman, Abdollah Ramazanzadeh, also asserted any decision regarding the enrichment of uranium was for Tehran alone to take despite the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution demanding a suspension of enrichment-related activities.

"The suspension of enrichment is a voluntary act on our part, and it it us who will decide when we will lift it," said the spokesman for the Islamic republic's reformist government in a weekly press briefing.

Iran agreed last year to suspend the enrichment of uranium pending the completion of an IAEA probe, but has continued to press on with related work in the nuclear fuel cycle.

On Saturday the IAEA's board passed a resolution calling on Iran to also suspend the nuclear-related activities.

Iran, which asserts it wants to enrich uranium to produce fuel for reactors and not to make a nuclear bomb, has repeatedly said it reserves the right to resume such activities at any time.

"We will maintain the suspension" of enrichment, spokesman Ramazanzadeh said, but added "there was no international law that could constrain us" if enrichment was resumed.

Despite the angry response to the resolution, Iran has signalled it will negotiate.

On Sunday, the cleric in charge of Iran's nuclear negotiations rejected the resolution and threatened to halt stringent IAEA inspections if the issue was referred to the UN Security Council, something the United States is pushing for.

But he said Iran could only accept a suspension "through negotiations" -- signalling fresh talks were ahead before the IAEA's board meets again in November.

Nuclear fuel cycle work, including enrichment, is permitted under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if it is for peaceful purposes.

But Iran has been under pressure to stop because the process of enriching uranium can be used both to produce fuel for a nuclear reactor or the core of a nuclear bomb.

The three European countries that have been spearheading negotiations -- Britain, France and Germany -- have been pushing for Iran to abandon such work completely in exchange for increased trade and political benefits.

Ramazanzadeh signalled there was still no desire in the regime to accept such an offer.

"We consider that it is our right to acquire nuclear technology on the basis of international conventions ... and we know that nobody in the world can deprive us of this right," he told reporters.

But he said Iran would continue to cooperate with the IAEA, despite calls from some hardliners here for a pull-out from the NPT -- the path taken by North Korea --, even if, he said, the IAEA was bending to "pressure from some countries", a reference to the United States.

"We saw in Iraq how many of the American assertions were wrong and baseless, and today it is the turn of Iran," he said, referring to the pre-war charges that Saddam Hussein was concealing mass destruction weapons.

He also responded to a report in Newsweek magazine saying US spy agencies have played out "war games" to consider possible pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, and concluded that strikes would not resolve Washington's standoff with Tehran.

"Over the past 25 years we have become used to this kind of thing from the Americans," said Ramazanzadeh.

Iran and the United States cut off diplomatic relations in 1980.

"They know the Iranian nation will not give up in the face of such threats. We have taken preventative measure and are persuaded that if an attack happened ... we are capable of defending ourselves," he said.

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