NEW YORK, Sept 16: The United States explicitly acknowledged on Friday that Iran had a right to run a civilian nuclear program. “What we don’t want to do is give the impression that we don’t think that Iran should be a technologically sophisticated state,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with the New York Post.

“That’s why you’ve actually heard less from us about civil nuclear power in Iran,” she said. “There was a time when the US government had the position that Iran should never have civil nuclear power.”

Washington has argued that as a top oil producer, Iran did not need nuclear energy. But Ms Rice said: “There’s a right to have this. It’s a question of whether you exercise that right, given certain behaviour in the past.”

“What we don’t want is for them to have technological sophistication that leads to a bomb. That’s the issue,” she said in the interview outside the UN summit here

The United States had already implicitly accepted the idea of Iran retaining a civilian nuclear program, backing European proposals last month that would have barred Tehran only from activities with potential military uses.

Ms Rice’s explicit recognition came as the United States scouted world support for possible UN action against Iran for resuming uranium conversion work it had agreed to suspend last November.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is to meet on Monday in Vienna to discuss what to do about Iran, but Ms Rice was non-committal whether there was enough backing for a referral to the UN Security Council.

Ms Rice saw added reason for concern in the reported comments by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said on Thursday his country was ready to share its nuclear technology with Muslim nations.

“Generally, that’s called proliferation,” Ms Rice said in an interview with the editorial board of NBC television.

“I think that would probably not be within the responsibilities of a state operating within the NPT,” she said, referring to the 35-year-old nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that Iran has signed.

“And I hope people were listening. It’s one of the dangers of letting Iran get the fuel cycle.”

Tehran insists its program has always been strictly peaceful. Mr Ahmadinejad is expected to unveil proposals to resolve the dispute when he speaks to the UN General Assembly on Saturday.

IRANIANS ELATED: Comments by US President George Bush underlining Iran’s right to a nuclear energy programme have given fresh impetus to Tehran’s talks with the European Union, a senior Iranian official said on Friday.