IRAN - Feb 25 - Tehran Defiant On Nuclear Pursuit.

Pres Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad warns that Iran will not retreat from its nuclear programme, while Tehran seek to underline its technological prowess by announcing that it had fired a rocket into the atmosphere. "Iran has obtained the technology to produce nuclear fuel and Iran's move is like a train that has no brakes and no reverse gear", Ahmadi-Nejad said, according to Iran's ISNA student news agency. Ahmadi-Nejad's comments were quickly picked up by Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state. "They don't need a reverse gear", she responded on Fox News. "They need a stop button". Iran failed last week to meet a UN deadline to curb activities related to uranium enrichment, a process that can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons grade material. The extent to which Iran has mastered such technology remains one of the most important questions in the controversy over the nuclear programme, together with other factors such as Tehran's true intentions and the difficulty of forging a common front on the issue among big powers. In a sign of the heightened tension, a deputy foreign minister Manouchehr Mohammadi, said: We have prepared ourselves for any situation, even for war". However, the Iranian foreign ministry is not generally considered to be one of the main actors in the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme, and western diplomats say they believe Ahmadi-Nejad's influence in the country is declining in favour of a corps of more established pragmatists. Vice-President Dick Cheney reiterated the US position that "all options" were on the table for dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions, adding that it was "still our preference" to resolve the issue peacefully through working with the EU and the UN. Diplomats from the permanent five members of the UN Security Council and Germany meet in London due today to make a first attempt to reach consensus on a new set of UN sanctions on Iran. "It's reassuring that the Americans are working this way", a French diplomat said. "We certainly don't have the impression that they want a military conflict". In a further source of tension, Iran was initially reported by agencies to have fired a rocket into space using technology similar to intercontinental ballistic missiles. But Ali Akbar Golrou, the executive deputy of Iran's aerospace research centre, later told Fars News Agency the rocket was not a missile capable of reaching space but would eventually fall back to earth after reaching a suborbital position.