TEHRAN, 18 September 2004 — Iran will take the UN nuclear watchdog to the International Court of Justice if it sets a deadline for the Islamic state to commit to a new freeze on uranium enrichment activities, a top Iranian leader said yesterday.

Influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told worshippers at Friday prayers at Tehran University that Iran would lodge a complaint at The Hague tribunal against the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for acting outside its powers.

“If it sets a deadline to halt some of our nuclear activities we have the right to go to The Hague,” Rafsanjani said. “Passing such an unjust resolution with a deadline is a violation of the law.”

Washington accuses Iran of pursuing nuclear arms under cover of a civilian atomic program. Iran denies this, saying it only wants to generate electricity.

The United States had been lobbying an IAEA meeting in Vienna to set an Oct. 31 deadline for Iran to halt its enrichment program or face UN Security Council economic sanctions.

But a diplomat said on Thursday that Washington had reached a compromise with France, Britain and Germany with a resolution calling for an immediate halt to the enrichment program, but not setting a deadline.

The text still has to be approved by most of the 35 nations on the IAEA governing board.

In remarks broadcast live on state radio, Rafsanjani called the debate a “scandal”, saying the IAEA was obliged to offer technological assistance to Iran based on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

As a signatory to the NPT, Iran is allowed to enrich uranium — a process that can be used both for nuclear power plants or atomic weapons.

Rafsanjani, a key adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s most powerful figure, said Iran would not yield to mounting international pressure to abandon its nuclear program.

“We have never surrendered to pressures and threats,” he said.

In Vienna, IAEA has found no sign of nuclear-related activity at a site in Iran called Parchin that several US officials said may be linked to secret atom bomb research, Mohamed El-Baradei said.

“We are aware of this new site that has been referred to. We do not have any indication that this site has nuclear-related activities. However, we continue to investigate this and other sites (in Iran),” El-Baradei told reporters.

El-Baradei, who heads the UN body, also dismissed the allegation that he had suppressed information about Parchin in his latest progress report on inspections in Iran.

A prominent international expert said on Wednesday that new satellite images showed the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran may be a site for research, testing and production of nuclear weapons.

Two US officials said on Thursday that Parchin clearly demonstrated Iran’s intention to develop atomic weapons.

El-Baradei said he would be going to South Korea in early October to discuss recent allegations about undeclared nuclear research there, including the enrichment of a small amount of uranium and separation of a minute quantity of plutonium.