Bush, speaking to reporters, also praised the "courageous souls" protesting against the Iranian government and urged the government to treat them with "the utmost of respect."

Iran is suspected of working to develop nuclear weapons, though the government denies it.

"The international community must come together to make it very clear to Iran that we will not tolerate construction of a nuclear weapon," Bush told reporters at the end of a meeting in the White House Cabinet Room. "Iran would be dangerous if it had a nuclear weapon," he said.

Bush said he had brought the matter of nuclear weapons up with other leaders at the G-8 meeting of the top seven industrial powers plus Russia earlier this month.

"There was near-universal agreement that we all must work together to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon," he said.

Iran also has an advanced missile program and maintains ties to terrorist groups, possibly including al-Qaida, the administration has asserted, and is run by conservative mullahs who are deeply hostile toward the United States.

Bush labeled Iraq a threat to US national security before invoking his revised US defense posture, which called for pre-emptive attack in such a case.

TEHRAN LEVELS CHARGES

Tehran earlier Wednesday accused the United Nations nuclear watchdog of tailoring a damning report on Iran to Washington's hard-line view of the Islamic republic.

The governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency is meeting in Vienna, Austria, debating an IAEA report that says Iran repeatedly failed over the last 12 years to declare the import, processing and storage of nuclear materials as required by the IAEA.

Iran's representative to the IAEA, Ali Salehi, told the agency's 35-nation board of governors the report "could have been crafted in a more partial, fair and balanced manner."

While referring only to "influential capitals," Salehi clearly blamed this alleged lack of objectivity on Washington, which has accused Iran of using its nuclear energy program as a ruse to develop the capacity to build nuclear weapons.

Iran vehemently denies this.

Salehi said the report reflected the "awkward directives issued at certain influential capitals on the form, the content and the final conclusion and judgement of the report."

TREATY AT ISSUE

Iran has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the global pact aimed at halting the spread of nuclear weapons. All nations that have signed the treaty have an IAEA safeguards agreement to prevent diversion of nuclear materials to secret weapons programs.

Salehi also rejected US allegations that Iran was in violation of the treaty. If the board were to find Iran in "non-compliance" with the treaty, it would have to notify the Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions.

"Iran has fulfilled its obligations under all provisions of the NPT," he said, adding that Iran was "denouncing the nuclear option" for its arms industry.

Bush did not say Wednesday what he would do if international inspectors found Iran in violation of its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

LANGUAGE OF FORCE IS "FUTILE"

Spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) Salehi told the IAEA board of governors that it should be careful with the wording of its statement at the end of the debate on Iran, which diplomats said could last until Thursday.

"The language of force and threat will be futile," he said.

Diplomats told Reuters any statement or resolution by the board at the end of the debate would appeal to Tehran to unconditionally sign the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which permits more intrusive, short-notice nuclear inspections.

Such inspections might help Iran fight US allegations that it is secretly developing nuclear arms, but Salehi said nothing to indicate it would drop its key condition - an end to the ban on importing peaceful nuclear technology from Western firms to prevent it being used in a secret weapons program.

The US case was seemingly bolstered on Tuesday by an Iranian exile opposition group, which released information it said came from reliable sources in Iran who have given accurate tip-offs about facilities that Iran later declared to the IAEA.

"Iran's) is a very sophisticated, advanced, serious and expensive nuclear weapons program," Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told a news conference in Vienna.

(China Daily June 19, 2003)