Iran to retaliate severely to any US military action

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned yesterday that Iran would retaliate severely to any possible attack by the United States over Tehran's controversial nuclear programme.

"They (the Americans) understand that if they should make this mistake, the retaliation of the Iranian people will be severe and they will repent," he told reporters at the end of a landmark visit to the United Arab Emirates.

Ahmadinejad, who was speaking three days after US Vice President Dick Cheney warned that the United States would not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, said the era when a state could come from "thousands of miles away" to strike another country had gone.

"They cannot strike Iran. The Iranian people are able to retaliate. They are able to protect and defend themselves well," he said in Farsi through an interpreter.

Ahmadinejad repeated Tehran's assertions that its nuclear programme, which the United States suspects is a cover for developing atomic weapons, was being pursued "within the context of the law" in keeping with its "right to acquire this energy."

He dismissed Cheney's warnings made from the hangar deck of a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf on Friday, saying: "The message did not contain anything new."

Ahmadinejad arrived in the UAE on Sunday hot on on the heels of Cheney, who has been touring Arab allies to rally support as Washington grapples with mounting violence in Iraq while not ruling out the use of force against Iran.

The Iranian leader said landmark talks on Iraq between US and Iranian delegates, announced by both sides on Sunday, would take place in Baghdad, but the date has not been decided.

The United States "requested to talk with Iran" in order to solve security issues in Iraq, he said. "In order to support the Iraqi people, we declared that we are ready."

US officials said the talks would take place in the next few weeks.

Ahmadinejad, whose country has a longstanding dispute with the UAE over three strategic Gulf islands, said his visit, the first by an Iranian head of state, had "turned a new page in the bilateral relationship between the two countries."

He played down the row over the islands of Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa, which were annexed by Iran's pro-Western Shah in 1971 and are claimed by Abu Dhabi.