New York  - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended his nation's right to possess civilian nuclear technology and used the opportunity on Tuesday in the UN General Assembly to denounce nuclear powers that want to cancel that right.

"These are the same powers that produce new generations of lethal nuclear arms and possess stockpiles of nuclear weapons that no international organizations is monitoring," he told the 192-nation assembly.

"And the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were perpetrated by one of them," he said, without mentioning the United States, which dropped atomic bombs on the two Japanese cities in 1945 to end World War II.

He called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to form a committee to be established by independent states to monitor the disarmament of nuclear superpowers.

"The Iranian nation is for dialogue," he said. "But it has not accepted and will not accept illegal demands."

Ahmadinejad gave no hints at accepting compromises offered by the European Union to solve the dispute over his country's uranium enrichment programmes.

The French and some European governments have threatened to impose additional sanctions if Iran continues to advance its enrichment technology.

Ahmadinejad denounced the United States without specifically naming it in the situations in Iraq, where he said a dictator was toppled without any weapons of mass destruction found. The US invaded Iraq in 2003 and overthrew Saddam Hussein.

"Millions of people have been killed or displaced, and the occupiers, without a sense of shame, are still seeking to solidify their position in the political geography of the region and to dominate oil resources," he said.

He denounced the US and Israel for the unsettled conditions in Palestinian territories, and the US and NATO for the current situation in Afghanistan.

"In Latin America, people find their security, national interests and cultures to seriously endangered by the menacing shadow of alien domineering governments, and even by the embassies of some empires," Ahmadinejad said.

Several groups protested his attendance at UN meetings. Outside UN headquarters, a few hundred demonstrators chanted "Ahmadinejad out of UN."

New York local officials and religious leaders addressed the crowd, while some protestors acted out scenes of torture of political prisoners.

"To him, I guess it's a feather in his cap that they allow him to speak," said Celia John, who came to the rally with about 25 members of her church in Brooklyn.

"It gets me so mad, sometimes I wish we would get rid of the UN," she said, but added it was important to talk to your "enemies" as well as friends.

Israeli President Shimon Peres condemned the appearance by Ahmadinejad, whom he accused of advocating a "return to the age of darkness." (dpa)