Iran showed no signs of giving up its work on nuclear fuel cycle on Tuesday, one day after the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding it to suspend uranium enrichment by Aug. 31.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated on Tuesday that Iran would maintain its right to produce nuclear fuel regardless of the UN Security Council resolution.

"Iran considers developing peaceful nuclear fuel cycle technology as its right and will maintain the inalienable right," he told a rally in the northeastern town of Bojnurd.

"If some people think they can talk to us with a language of force and threats, they are making a bad mistake," Ahmadinejad asserted in his live broadcast speech on a state television.

It was the first remarks of Ahmadinejad over Iran's nuclear program after the UN Security Council adopted the resolution on Monday by a vote of 14 to 1.

But the Iranian president did not mention directly the resolution, which urges Tehran to "suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development" by Aug. 31 or face the prospect of sanctions.

Although the resolution dropped the threat of immediate sanctions and required the Council to hold further discussions before it considers sanctions, some other senior Iranian officials still strongly lashed out at the resolution.

"Such resolutions have no credit," Iran's Majlis (parliament) Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel told a meeting of Tehran-based ambassadors of some Islamic states.

"It is ridiculous that the UN Security Council feels danger over Iran's civilian nuclear program and issued a statement against Iran under circumstances that the UN just expressed its regret over the Zionist regime's crimes in Qana," Haddad-Adel said.

He was referring to a recent Israeli air raid on southern Lebanese village of Qana that killed over 50 civilians, mostly children and women.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi also joined in the lambasting of the UN Security Council resolution, saying it "lacks legality and merely pursues political goals".

"In fact, it has been designed to serve as a destructive resolution intended to exert pressure on Iran and block the path of negotiations on its initial stages," he was quoted by the local Fars News Agency as saying.

"If we consider this resolution along with the UN Security Council's inability to stop the Zionist regime's massive crimes and manslaughter in Lebanon during the last three weeks, there will remain no credit for the Security Council," he said.

Earlier, spokesman for Iranian Majlis foreign affairs commission Kazem Jalali also termed the UN Security Council resolution as "unacceptable".

"The Security Council resolution is unacceptable and is shifting the climate down a path which will help no one," Jalali said,

He warned that the United States would be a loser if it wants to play a "game" over Iran's nuclear issue.

"The Americans must be sure that Iran will not take part in a game which it will lose," the spokesman said, adding that "If there were to be a loser, it would be those who have shifted the Iranian nuclear issue away from dialogue."

The United States has accused Iran of secretly developing nuclear weapons under a civilian front, a charge categorically denied by Tehran who insists that it only wants to enrich uranium to make reactor fuel for peaceful use which is the right qualified by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

On June 6, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana presented Iran with a package agreed on by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain, -- plus Germany concerning the Iranian nuclear issue.

The proposal includes both incentives aimed at persuading Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and possible sanctions if Iran does not comply. Iran has promised to give an official response by Aug. 22.

The newly-adopted UN Security Council resolution, which demands Iran's suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities by Aug. 31, would give Tehran nearly one month to consider its next step.

Source: Xinhua