Iran agreed in November last year to suspend its fuel cycle work -- the focus of international fears the country may be seeking the bomb -- and open talks with Britain, France and Germany.

But the clerical regime has since voiced frustration over the negotiations, in which the EU-3 are offering a package of incentives in return for "objective guarantees" from Iran that it will not develop the bomb.

"Very certainly we will resume some of our activities," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.

"We are in the process of discussing among ourselves which activities, but this does not concern enrichment," he said, adding the leadership would make a decision within seven or eight days.

"The negotiations are continuing, and as long as they continue the suspension of enrichment will continue," Asefi said.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, has already said that certain activities linked to uranium conversion could restart.

Uranium conversion is a process that turns raw "yellowcake" into the feed gas that can then be refined in centrifuges in the enrichment process -- which in turn can make fuel for nuclear reactors, or constitute the explosive core of atomic bombs.

Iran sees conversion as separate from enrichment, a view that is not shared by the EU.

As a UN non-proliferation conference began Monday in New York, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer warned that a resumption of enrichment "would lead to a collapse of the talks" and lead the EU to side with the United States and take Iran before the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.

"It is the foundation of the talks that uranium enrichment remains suspended," Fischer said.

He also made the European objective clear when he said the goal of the talks was a "permanent cessation of the enrichment process" -- a term that diplomats say includes uranium conversion.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said that Iran should refrain from unilaterally resuming any enrichment activities.

"I would hope that the Iranians will not take any unilateral decisions to initiate any activities that now are currently suspended. I think that any future move has to be agreed between both parties," he said.

But Asefi shrugged off the warnings.

"The Europeans know that we are not afraid of threats. This kind of rhetoric will have no impact on Iran," he said.

The EU-Iran talks remain deadlocked with the Europeans demanding that Iran halt enrichment activities altogether -- seen as the best possible "objective guarantee" -- and the Iranian side demanding the resumption of relatively low-scale enrichment.

Iran is a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and is standing by what it sees as a right to conduct nuclear work for peaceful purposes.

"Iran will not renounce its legitimate rights," Asefi said. "It is a case of defending the right of Iran to master civil nuclear technology."

The United States has accused the Islamic republic of "cynically" exploiting the treaty -- in other words working within the confines of the NPT, claiming to only be seeking atomic energy and acquiring the technology needed to make a bomb.

Both ElBaradei and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned Monday at the opening of the month-long NPT conference that the treaty was out of date in the face of new threats and technology, and needed to be fixed.

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