TEHRAN, 16 August 2005 — Iran said yesterday it was willing to keep negotiating with the Europeans over its nuclear program but again insisted it would not give up its “legitimate rights.”

“We are ready to negotiate under any circumstances but if our dossier is referred to the Security Council with political motivations it will create restrictions for us,” outgoing Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said.

“Brave Iranians, accustomed to foreign threats and pressures, will never give up their legitimate rights,” he was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA.

Iran is at loggerheads with the international community over its nuclear program after it resumed sensitive uranium conversion activities, ending a nine-month freeze agreed on during talks with the Europeans.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said the resumption of uranium conversion was “not negotiable” despite a resolution adopted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week urging Iran to suspend all such activities.

The IAEA however stopped short of referring the case to the UN Security Council, which could impose sanctions on Iran.

Asefi also cautioned the Europeans Sunday that their future attitude toward Iran would determine whether it decided to resume uranium enrichment, a process that makes fuel for nuclear power plants or can be the core of an atomic bomb.

Iran, accused by the United States of seeking nuclear weapons, says it has the right to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Meanwhile, Iran named an outspoken hard-liner to run its nuclear policy yesterday in a move likely to intensify international concerns following Tehran’s rejection of European incentives for abandoning ultra-sensitive fuel cycle work.

President Mahmood Ahmadinejad nominated the former director of the state broadcast media, Ali Larijani, as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s top policy-making body.

Larijani, one of eight candidates in the first round of Iran’s presidential election in June, is a trusted aide of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

He is on the record as a staunch critic of troubled talks with the European Union on providing reassurances that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively civil.

He was outspokenly dismissive of a package of incentives that the European Union offered earlier this month in return for Iran giving up ultra-sensitive nuclear fuel cycle work, deriding it as being asked to “give up a pearl for a sweetie.”

Ahmadinejad also nominated acting Tehran Mayor Ali Saeedlou for the most prestigious Cabinet job, oil minister of OPEC’s second largest exporter. Saeedlou, 53, is a right-hand man of Ahmadinejad.

When Ahmadinejad became Tehran mayor in 2003, he appointed Saeedlou to manage the capital’s finances.