Tehran

Irans nuclear work will defiantly go on, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, after UN inspectors left Tehran following talks that failed to lift their suspicions of atomic weapons research, AFP reports.

" The Iranian nation has never been seeking an atomic weapon and never will be.

It will prove to the world that a nuclear weapon cannot create supremacy," Khamenei told Iranian nuclear scientists, according to a government statement.

" The path of scientific development, particularly the nuclear field, should continue strongly and seriously," he said.

" Pressure, sanctions, threats and assassinations will not bear any fruit and Iran will continue its path of scientific development," Khamenei said.

The forceful restatement of Irans longheld position came after a five- strong delegation from the UNs International Atomic Energy Agency left empty- handed following two days of talks focusing on suspected military aspects of Irans nuclear programme.

The delegations leader, UN chief nuclear inspector Herman Nackaerts, said on arrival in Vienna that, although it had " approached this trip in a constructive spirit," no agreement with the Iranians on elucidating worrisome activities was forthcoming.

" We could not get access" to Irans military site in Parchin where suspected nuclear warhead design experiments were conducted, according to a November IAEA report, Nackaerts said.

No further talks were arranged, he added, contradicting Irans envoy to the IAEA, who was quoted by the 'ISNA'news agency as saying discussions " would continue." " We could not formalise the way forward. We will now report to the ( IAEA) director general and later to the board of governors," Nackaerts said.

" Then we will have to see what are the next steps." IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said in a statement that " it is disappointing that Iran did not accept our request to visit Parchin" during this latest visit, or a previous one at the end of January.

The trip was seen as an important precursor to a possible resumption of talks between Iran and the P5+ 1 powers - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany - which had broken down in Turkey 13 months ago. Western suspicion that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons research were crystallised - although not entirely validated - in the November IAEA report.

Since the reports release, Europe and the United States have been ramping up economic sanctions on Iran, targeting its vital oil exports.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ( R) listening to the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Fereydoun Abbasi Davani during a meeting with Iranian nuclear scientists AFP