TEHRAN, 13 July 2004 — Iran ruled out yesterday holding direct talks with the United States on its nuclear program. “There is no justification for accepting suggestions to hold negotiations with a country which adopts a bullying attitude toward others,” Hassan Rohani, secretary-general of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told state television.

Washington accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran says its ambitions are limited to generating electricity from nuclear reactors. Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency, had told US policy-makers in March that Iran might be open to a deal and suggested direct US contacts with Tehran, US officials said. Washington broke ties with Tehran following its 1979 revolution.

Rohani also played down negotiations with Germany, France and Britain and said Iran held talks with them in the past year because the big three European powers initiated the dialogue. “The other party to the negotiations for us is the International Atomic Energy Agency and we have nothing to do with any other country,” he said.

“If we are talking with the Europeans countries, it is because we have normal relations with them and they took the initiative to do so.” The IAEA board passed a resolution in June that rebuked Tehran for not fully cooperating with IAEA inspectors.

In retaliation, Iran said it was resuming production and testing of centrifuges, which can be used to enrich uranium, ending an agreement with the European states that it would suspend such activities.

Meanwhile, Iranian security forces have stepped up what appears to be a major crackdown on insufficiently veiled women by launching raids on shopping centers and shops selling skimpy clothing, witnesses said yesterday. According to one witness, scores of policemen — and policewomen in chadors — raided the Milad commercial center in the west of Tehran on Sunday, and detained dozens of young women deemed not to be respecting the Islamic dress code. They also confiscated coats they considered to be too transparent or figure-hugging.

Another resident reported a similar raid in the Sorkheh Bazar shopping center in the central district of Vanak, with dozens more young girls also arrested. One man said he had to go to release his cousin from police custody, but added that the woman was only freed on condition that she return for a course in Islamic morals.

In recent weeks, a string of similar raids have been reported, mainly in the more upmarket north of the capital. Scores of young girls have been seen being taken away from commercial centers in minibuses operated by the police.

Police and Islamic militiamen have also reportedly stepped up their raids on private parties where they suspect the presence of alcohol or mixed-sex dancing. But it remains unclear if the current clampdown is the usual pre-summer anti-vice operation, or a sign of stricter rules following the shift to he right of the regime following February’s parliament election of conservatives.

In another development, the judiciary has arrested two senior members of the Islamic republic’s main teaching union but has not disclosed the reasons for their detention, the official news agency IRNA reported yesterday. The Iranian Association of Teachers’ Secretary-General Mahmoud Beheshti Langarudi and its spokesman Ali-Asghar Zati were taken into custody on Saturday, it said.

According to an official from Tehran’s judiciary, their arrests were not related to their union activities — notably the staging of a strike by thousands of Iranian teachers over the non-payment of salaries and crippling low wages in March this year.

Langarudi had been summoned to court in May on charges related to the strike, which according to the union involved around a third — or 200,000 — of Iranian teachers. But IRNA also quoted a union source as saying that this time the pair could be facing charges related to national security violations and the staging of two protests in June.

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami yesterday accused the UN nuclear watchdog of double standard and told it to pay closer attention to countries that had not signed up to global anti-proliferation safeguards. In a meeting with visiting Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Khatami reaffirmed that nuclear weapons had “no place” in Iran’s defense doctrine and that he was campaigning for a Middle East free of such arms.

According to the IRNA news agency, Khatami “expressed regret over the double standard approach toward those countries possessing nuclear weapons”, a reference to Iran’s view that it is being unfairly targeted by the IAEA while Israel has escaped major pressure.

“If atomic weapons are dangerous, then the world should be concerned about atomic programs of those countries that are not members of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Khatami was quoted as saying.