Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told the United States programme ABC News that a document purporting to show his country's involvement in the development of an atomic bomb is false. He said it was forged by the US.

Last week, the United Kingdom's Times newspaper reported that a confidential document, written in the Farsi language, described a four-year Iranian plan to develop and test parts for a neutron initiator. This is a device that floods the core of highly enriched uranium with subatomic particles to set off the chain reaction of a nuclear explosion. Mr Ahmadinejad called the report "a tasteless joke."

The United Nations has instituted sanctions against Iran because it refuses to cease its uranium enrichment program. Iran, which has always insisted that its program is strictly for peaceful purposes, is now threatened by new sanctions because it has rejected a proposal to carry out the enrichment abroad.