LONDON • Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator said the US is intent on toppling Tehran’s government whatever happens in talks over its nuclear plans, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported yesterday.

“The nuclear issue is just a pretext. If it was not the nuclear matter, they would have come up with something else,” the Guardian quoted Ali Larijani as saying.

The United States, which suspects Iran is trying to make highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, says it wants a diplomatic solution but has not ruled out military action. Iran says it needs atomic technology for power generation.

Larijani accused Washington of relying on force to achieve its aims in the Middle East, and said U.S. policies in Iraq and the Palestinian territories had also complicated efforts to reach a deal over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“If they continue on the same path, the price of oil will skyrocket and it will strengthen our resolve. They want to set fire to the region,” Larijani said. “The American strategy is to use force to secure their interests”.

The United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany have presented Iran with proposed incentives, including access to advanced civilian nuclear technology, aiming to contain its nuclear programme.

Larijani described the offer as a “sermon” and rejected suspension of uranium enrichment as a precondition for negotiations, the newspaper said. He said Iran would present extensive and detailed counter-proposals to the major powers’ offer, which he described as ambiguous “from the beginning to the end of the package”.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran will respond to the proposals by August 22, but Washington is pushing for an earlier reply. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana expects to meet Larijani in the next week to explain the proposal. Larijani denied Iran was planning to block oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for two fifths of all globally traded oil. But he warned that if the United Nations Security Council took action against Iran it would “reconsider its relationship “ with the International Atomic Agency, which could spell an end to UN inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities, the paper said.