New York - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday said that his country was prepared to manage on its own if subjected to a new round of international sanctions and defended his nation's right to possess civilian nuclear technology.

Ahmadinejad declared the nuclear dispute "resolved" and rejected pressure from an international community that he said was being controlled by a few select nations.

His comments, in a speech to the UN General Assembly and later in a press conference, came as members of the UN Security Council were considering fresh sanctions over Iran's nuclear activities, which Western nations argue is part of a weapons programme.

Ahmadinejad accused the Security Council of thinking "they own the world" and denounced nuclear powers for seeking to control access to nuclear technology while holding those weapons themselves.

"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 added, without naming 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 hint at accepting compromises offered by the European Union to resolve the dispute over his country's uranium enrichment programmes.

The French government last week threatened to impose additional sanctions after an IAEA report said that Iran was expanding its nuclear activities. The five permanent members of the Security Council - the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia - plus Germany met Friday to discuss a new round of economic sanctions.

"If they want to create sanctions, they are sanctioning themselves, not us," Ahmadinejad told reporters. Iran is a "big country. ... It can manage itself quite well."

Ahmadinejad denounced the United States for seeking to dominate broad regions of the world - including Iraq and Afghanistan - and said that both Israel and the US were in decline.

"The Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse," he said. "American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road."

Israeli President Shimon Peres condemned the appearance by Ahmadinejad, whom he accused of advocating a "return to the age of darkness." Peres expressed concern that the Iranian president was getting attention from the international community and media.

Several groups protested Ahmadinejad's attendance at the UN gathering. 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 and hanging 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 "enemies" as well as friends.