"As we have said before, we will not give up our rights," Ali Akbar Salehi told the state-owned Iran newspaper.

"There is actually no need for us to enrich uranium to more than four or five percent purity as the reactors that we use need uranium enriched to a maximum of five percent," he said.

"So, enrichment to five percent is the highest level that we want for our reactors. But that does not mean that we will renounce our right to enrich uranium level to a higher level."

The UN atomic watchdog drew up a draft agreement on Wednesday for Russia to process Iranian low-enriched uranium to the 20 percent level required by a research reactor in Tehran and for France to turn it into fuel form.

The draft followed two and a half days of talks in Vienna also involving the United States.

"Iran has the capability to enrich uranium to 20 percent but prefers to obtain the fuel from abroad," Salehi said.

"This policy has numerous hidden messages that I would rather not go into," he added, without elaborating.

Uranium enrichment is the sensitive process that lies at the heart of Western concerns about Iran's nuclear programme. It produces the fuel for civilian reactors, but in highly extended form can also make the fissile core of an atomic bomb.

The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has asked Iran and the major powers to give their views on the UN watchdog's draft by Friday.

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