IRAN - Aug 7 - Tehran To Resume Nuclear Work After Rejecting EU Offer.

The country's FM insists it will resume uranium conversion this week after rejecting EU incentives to end its nuclear fuel work, and says it is not concerned about being referred to the UN for possible sanctions. Britain, Germany and France, heading nuclear negotiations with Iran for the EU, have called an emergency meeting of the IAEA's board of governors on Aug 9 to discuss Iran's case. The three EU nations said they would recommend referring Iran to the Security Council if it went ahead with plans to break UN seals and resumed work at the Isfahan uranium conversion plant. A FM statement announcing the decision came as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in as Iran's president. Ahmadinejad's new government faces a decision about whether to proceed with its announced plan to continue with a uranium conversion process that Iran suspended a year ago - a step the West has said could lead to it seeking sanctions against Iran at the UN Security Council. A spokesman for the FM, Hamidreza Assefi, told state radio that the European proposal, which was drawn up by Britain, France and Germany on behalf of the EU, was "unacceptable". "The proposals do not meet Iran's minimum expectations", he said, adding that Iran would send its official rejection to the Europeans within days. The French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, said in an interview published Aug 7 that the EU's proposed settlement of Tehran's nuclear standoff with the West included an offer to make Iran a major oil supply route between Central Asia and Europe. Tehran's central objection to the EU proposal was that the offer failed to recognise its right to enrich uranium. In a newspaper interview, Douste-Blazy urged Iran to go back and carefully consider the proposal. In his inauguration speech, Ahmadinejad said Iran would not give up its rights, but did not refer specifically to Iran's nuclear program. "We want peace and justice for all, and they are the integral part of our foreign policy", he said, addressing senior Iranian officials and foreign ambassadors at the ceremony. "I stress on these two principles so that countries which use the instrument of threat against our nation know that our people will never give up its right to justice". Iran has said that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.