Iran promised to meet today's deadline for suspending a uranium enrichment process that could be used for making nuclear weapons - a freeze that could spare it UN Security Council sanctions.

　　"We will start suspension of uranium enrichment activities from tomorrow on, as we promised," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference yesterday.

　　On november 14 Iran promised the European Union's "big three" - France, Germany and Britain - that it would freeze enrichment by November 22 to try to ease concern it was pursuing nuclear weapons and escape a referral to the Security Council by the UN nuclear watchdog.

　　Asefi emphasized the suspension was temporary and voluntary. Oil-rich Iran insists its plans are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity.

　　Asefi and nuclear chief Hassan Rohani also rejected outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell's assertions Teheran had been working on ways to deliver an atomic warhead on a missile.

　　(Reuters)