Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed to push ahead with his country's controversial nuclear-development programme.
Mr Ahmadinejad - regarded as hardliner - is due to succeed reformist president Mohammad Khatami on August 3rd after beating the veteran Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in elections on Friday.
He has angered the European Union and United States, in particular, when he told reporters at his first major media call since his victory that Iran would continue talks with the EU about its nuclear programme but that the United States may not be involved.
The Americans say the Iranians are planing to develop a nuclear arsenal, but Tehran says its nuclear research is for power-generation purposes only. Mr Ahmadinejad said any discussion on its programme would be based on the Muslim republic’s "national interest".
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the president-elect was "no friend of democracy [and] no friend of freedom".
Many Iranians fear the former Tehran mayor’s landslide victory heralds a return to the purges and strictures of the early days after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
There is a significant reformist element in Iran, but the new leader - who is ultimately less powerful than the state’s council of clerics - could turn away from reform to avoid confrontation with ayatollahs.
However, yesterday Mr Ahmadinejad (48) promised: "Moderation and tolerance will be our government's main lines, a government of friendship and tolerance that belongs to all Iranians. . . . We will serve members of this nation without considering their tendencies," he said.
"I believe religious democracy . . . is the best kind of government in the world."
Mr Ahmadinejad secured many votes from Iran's religiously devout poor as he railed against what he called rich cliques and vowed to share out oil wealth.
Iranian conservatives have hailed Mr Ahmadinejad as a man who could take on the United States and uphold the moral principles of the revolution. Reformists have blamed themselves for failing to implement change more effectively under Mr Khatami.
The United States
said Mr Ahmadinejad's government would be unacceptable to young Iranians and women.
EU Commissioner Franco Frattini told Italy's La Repubblicanewspaper that dialogue would be frozen if Iran fails to meet human rights standards.
But German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the European Union should put forward new proposals to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme.