TEHRAN, May 28: Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday ruled out backing down in a dispute over his country’s nuclear programme, as top Russian officials made a fresh bid to find a diplomatic solution to the worsening crisis.

“The young Iranian engineers, with their successes, have guaranteed the long-term energy future of the country,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said of Iran’s progress in nuclear fuel cycle work, seen in the West as a cover for weapons development.

“We must not lose this at any price, because any retreat would be a 100 per cent loss,” Khamenei was quoted as saying by state television.

His comments came as Russian National Security Council chief Igor Ivanov and Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak held a series of meetings with top Iranian officials.

“Russia believes that the nuclear question cannot be solved by anything except dialogue, and any violent measures would complicate the situation more,” Iranian state television quoted Ivanov as saying in a meeting with Ali Larijani, Iran’s top negotiator.

Ivanov and Kislyak were also lined up for talks with Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Gholamreza Aghazadeh.

No details from the talks were immediately available, but the mission follows up on a meeting of senior officials from Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — the five permanent UN Security Council members — as well as Germany that failed to break an impasse on how to deal with Iran although progress was reported.

A follow-up meeting at the foreign ministers’ level is expected to take place in the coming week. US officials said it would probably take place in a European capital.

At their meeting in London last Wednesday, the major powers discussed a European proposal aimed at breaking Iran’s determination to enrich uranium, a process which can be extended from making reactor fuel to nuclear weapons.

The EU proposal would combine technology, economic and other incentives for Iran, but also the threat of an arms embargo and other sanctions if the Islamic republic defied a UN injunction to halt enrichment.

Tehran has rebuffed the EU proposal, repeating that its right to enrich uranium was not negotiable. Both Russia and China oppose talk of sanctions against Iran. Russia in particular has huge economic interests in Iran’s atomic energy drive.

As a signatory to the nuclear NPT, Iran insists it has a right to uranium enrichment and has vowed not to back down on nuclear research and development.—AFP