UNITED NATIONS, April 28: The stage was set for a confrontation in the UN Security Council as the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report on Friday that Iran had refused to give up its uranium enrichment activities.

The report, sent by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei to the president of the Security Council, said Iran had failed to meet a deadline for complying with requests to suspend uranium enrichment.

However, the IAEA said Iran had offered to provide a timetable for cooperation with UN inspectors if the UN nuclear watchdog, and not the Security Council, oversaw compliance.

In an immediate reaction to the IAEA report, US President George Bush said Tehran’s nuclear ambitions were ‘dangerous’, but that Washington wanted to resolve the dispute ‘diplomatically and peacefully’.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remained defiant, vowing no Security Council resolution could make Iran give up its nuclear programme.

“The Iranian nation won’t give a damn about such useless resolutions,” Mr Ahmadinejad told thousands of people on Friday.

“Today, they want to force us to give up our way through threats and sanctions, but those who resort to language of coercion should know that nuclear energy is a national demand and by the grace of God, today Iran is a nuclear country,” he said.

Officials in Washington have already said they will ask for a legally-binding resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter calling upon Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment programme. A Chapter 7 resolution would pave the way for possible penalties against Tehran, and also leave the door open for military action.

The American Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, told reporters that work on such a measure was already under way.

“We’re going to continue to consult. But that’s our intention at this point. It would be a Chapter 7 resolution, the first step of which would be to make mandatory the IAEA resolutions, particularly the February IAEA board resolution that called on Iran to suspend enrichment-related activities and other things. That would be the first step and we would be pushing for that as soon as possible.”