On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi rejected any Iranian concealment of two nuclear facilities that US officials have claimed the Islamic Republic was clandestinely developing to possibly build nuclear weapons.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran's activities in this field are totally transparent, clear and peaceful and there is no secrete and obscure point on the launch of these (plants) in the future", the official Iranian news agency IRNA quoted Mr. Kharrazi as having said, adding, "basically there is no possibility of concealing such centres".

He said Tehran had invited the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect both the facilities. ''We have no nuclear activity or study without the knowledge of the IAEA.

"The Iranians told me we could not visit the sites as planned this week because President Mohammad Khatami would be out of the country and ''they need some time to prepare''. As a result, the inspection has been rescheduled for February, instead of September, told reporters.

An IAEA spokeswoman, Melissa Fleming, said that the head of the agency, Mohamed El-Baradei, will go to Iran in February on a visit initially planned for this week but postponed by Tehran.

ISIS and CNN published Thursday satellite photographs of the Arak and Natanz sites, with experts identifying Arak as a production plant for "heavy water", used in a certain type of nuclear power plant that produces plutonium as a by-product and the Natanz site looked like a uranium enrichment plant, complete with centrifuges, which have a civilian use in producing nuclear fuel, but which can also be used to make weapons-grade uranium.

The production of heavy water and enriched uranium would make Iran self-sufficient in nuclear fuels, but it could also provide an unlimited supply of weapons, nuclear experts said.

Kharrazi stressed that Iran had no plans for building nuclear weapons and added that all its efforts in the nuclear energy field were intended for peaceful objectives.

"Iran wanted the two centres to generate part of its electricity needs", he explained, adding that by the next 20 years, Iran has to produce 6,000 megawatts of electricity by nuclear plants and the launch of these two centers are aimed to produce necessary fuel for these plants," Kharrazi said.

"Such American propaganda against Iran is not new and is intended to divert the world public opinion from the Zionist regime's threats to the region at this sensitive juncture", the Foreign Affairs senior spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi commented on the report.

"Iran believes it has the right to carry out necessary researches for peaceful use of nuclear energy and no country can deprive it from this natural right," Asefi added.

But both Iran and Russia have rejected these allegations and confirmed that not only they intended to finish the Booshehr plant, but also constructing new nuclear and conventional power stations.

However, the White House expressed "serious concerns" about the two new Iranian nuclear facilities, as the disclosure came one day only after North Korea, another member of the President Bush’s "axis of evil" that also includes Iran and Iraq, announced it would restart its nuclear tests and Washington was moving closer to confrontation with Iraq over its weapons programs.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the Iranian facilities reinforce growing U.S. fears about Iran's "across-the-board pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and missile capabilities".

U.S. officials said they would press for prompt inspections of the Iranian facilities and urge other nations to stop cooperating with Iran on nuclear matters.

"Our assessment, when we look at Iran, is that there is no economic gain for a country rich in oil and gas, like Iran, to build costly indigenous nuclear fuel cycle facilities" Fleischer said.

"Iran flares off more gas every year than the equivalent power it hopes to produce with these reactors", he pointed out.