TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran on Tuesday welcomed a US intelligence report which concluded it halted a drive for atomic weapons in 2003, saying the study undermined accusations by US President George W. Bush against Tehran.
The report by the US intelligence community said that US allegations about Iran's atomic goals have been exaggerated for at least two years, although it could have the capability to make a nuclear weapon by 2015.
A senior official of the UN nuclear watchdog, which has been investigating the Iranian nuclear programme for the past four years, said the report confirmed its assessment that Tehran represents "no imminent danger."
But the White House and its European allies insisted there should be no let-up in pressure amid talks on US-led calls for a third UN sanctions resolution punishing Tehran for its continued enrichment of uranium in defiance of Security Council ultimatums.
"This report proves that Bush's statements -- which always speak of the serious threat of Iran's nuclear programme -- are unreliable and fictitious," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in a statement.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told state radio: "We welcome it when any country that had questions about Iran's nuclear case in the past -- regardless of its motives -- realistically corrects its view."
In October, US President George W. Bush raised the spectre of "World War III" or a "nuclear holocaust" if Iran obtained an atomic arsenal and wrongly claimed that Tehran had openly "proclaimed" its desire for one.
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the consensus view of all 16 US spy agencies, said that Iran appeared "less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005".
It concluded that "the programme probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure (which) suggests that Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.
"But we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons," cautioned declassified findings of the estimate, which starkly contradicted the US spy agencies' 2005 conclusions.
Iranian government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham described the report as a "confession" and called on the US administration to pay damages for propagating "lies" against Tehran.
Ahead of the report's release, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States had been discussing US-led calls for a new Security Council sanctions resolution.
US national security adviser Stephen Hadley said he hoped that the report would not slow the momentum for a third set of sanctions.
"There's going to be a tendency of a lot of people to say: 'The problem is less bad than we thought, let's relax,'" said Hadley. "Our view is that would be a mistake."
Germany and Britain both said the report had vindicated Europe's approach of embarking on negotiations offering carrot and stick incentives to Iran. France said world powers should continue preparing a Security Council resolution.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was less positive about the report, vowing to keep working with Washington to prevent arch foe Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
The NIE judged with "moderate confidence" that Iran would be able to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon "sometime during the 2010-2015 timeframe".
However Hosseini disputed the report's contention that Iran had been seeking nuclear weapons before 2003. "We did not have any such activities to stop them in 2003," he told state television.
Despite an intensive four-year investigation, the International Atomic Energy Agency has been unable to confirm if the Iranian nuclear drive is peaceful or aimed at making nuclear weapons.
A senior IAEA official welcomed the report, saying it "validates the statements over the last years that inspectors have found no concrete evidence of an undeclared nuclear weapons programme in Iran."
The report also lends support to IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's assessment "that he has not seen an imminent danger and that there is ample time for negotiations," the official added.
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