Iran said on Saturday it was in no hurry to build new uranium enrichment plants, a key element of its controversial nuclear programme, and urged Western powers to accept a fuel deal brokered by Brazil and Turkey.

Vice president and atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi told state news agency IRNA that his organisation was still studying different locations for constructing new enrichment facilities.

"The locations will be finalised after ensuring that they meet the criteria set by us. We hope that by the end of this year a location will be fixed after taking all aspects into consideration," Salehi said.

"We are in no hurry in this regard. At the moment we are only identifying locations."

Salehi has previously said that new uranium plants would be located at sites which cannot be targeted by air strikes.

His statement on Saturday indicated a step backwards by Iran, after a senior adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on April 19 told ILNA news agency that the hardliner had approved locations for new uranium enrichment sites.

The "construction of these sites will start with his order," Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi had said, adding that the designs of the new plants were currently being studied.

Hashemi did not say how many new facilities had been approved by Ahmadinejad.

Earlier this year Salehi himself had said Iran would start work on two enrichment plants before the current Iranian year ends in March 2011.

Iran currently enriches uranium at the central city of Natanz and is building a second such facility near the Shiite shrine city of Qom.

Salehi's latest remarks come hot on the heels of new UN sanctions imposed on Tehran which demand that the Islamic republic stop construction of new enrichment sites.

The international pressure on Iran was further tightened after the UN Security Council on Wednesday imposed a fourth round of sanctions, this time tightening the noose on military and financial transactions.

Iran has refused to heed UN demands to suspend uranium enrichment, insisting that it is aimed at peaceful nuclear fuel production. It denies seeking to make atomic weapons, as suspected by the West.

Salehi also called on Western powers to accept a nuclear fuel swap deal that was brokered by Turkey and Brazil last month as a "dignified" way out of the continuing atomic standoff.

"The best dignified way out of Iran's nuclear issue for Western countries is to accept the fuel swap," Salehi said.

He branded the current standoff with world powers as their "self-created quagmire."

On May 17, Iran signed a deal with temporary UN Security Council members Turkey and Brazil to ship about half of its low enriched uranium (LEU) stockpile to Turkey to be exchanged for higher enriched reactor fuel.

Western powers reacted coldly to the deal, which builds on an International Atomic Energy Agency proposal in October to ship Iranian LEU to Russia and France for conversion into fuel for a Tehran research reactor.

But Iran dragged its feet for several months, insisting that it wanted a simultaneous swap on its own territory, a condition that was rejected by world powers backing the proposal brokered by the UN nuclear watchdog.