Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Thursday that Iran won't back away from uranium enrichment and said the world must treat Iran as a nuclear power.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greets a schoolgirl in Ferdos in Khorasan Razavi province, 890 km (530 miles) north east of Tehran, Iran, Thursday, April 13, 2006. [AP]

China's Foreign Ministry said Thursday it will send an envoy to Iran and Russia to discuss the dispute over Tehran's uranium enrichment program.

Assistant Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai, who is in charge of nuclear nonproliferation issues, will make a "working visit" to Iran and Russia from April 14 to 18, said spokesman Liu Jianchao.

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad comments were made as Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Tehran for talks aimed at defusing tensions over Iran's nuclear program.

"We know they (the U.S. and its allies) are waiting for us to retreat an inch so that they use that (against us)," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

Ahmadinejad declared on Tuesday that Iran "has joined the club of nuclear countries" by successfully producing enriched uranium for the first time, a key process in what Iran maintains is a peaceful energy program.

Western diplomats and experts familiar with the program, however, say Iran still is far from producing any weapons-grade material needed for bombs and may be exaggerating its own progress.

"Today, our situation has changed completely. We are a nuclear country and speak to others from the position of a nuclear country," IRNA quoted the president as saying Thursday.

"We won't hold talks with anyone about the right of the Iranian nation (to enrich uranium) and no one has the right to retreat, even one iota," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.

The United States accuses Tehran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to produce nuclear weapons but Tehran says its nuclear program is merely to generate electricity.

Iran's deputy nuclear chief, Mohammad Saeedi, said Wednesday that Iran intends to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges, signaling the country's resolve to expand a program the United Nations has demanded it halt.

The U.N. Security Council has insisted that Iran stop all enrichment activity by April 28.

On Tuesday, Iran announced it had produced enriched uranium on a small scale for the first time, using 164 centrifuges, at a facility in the central town of Natanz.