And Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency Ali Asghar Soltanieh said the Islamic republic was intent on enriching uranium to higher levels of purification in case an international deal aimed at supplying much-needed fuel for a research reactor fell through.
"We are writing officially to the (International Atomic Energy) Agency that the paragraph 28 (in the IAEA's latest report on Iran) is wrong," Tehran's envoy to the watchdog, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told reporters here.
"Nothing has been removed and therefore this scenario, this story and whatever had been said is wrong, absolutely."
In a new restricted report circulated to member states earlier this week, and a copy of which was obtained by AFP, the IAEA said that during a visit to a laboratory in February, UN inspectors had noticed that a component of some pyroprocessing equipment previously present "had been removed".
Pyroprocessing is a technique used to separate uranium or plutonium from spent fuel and some experts are concerned about the possible weaponisation implications of such work.
And the fact that such equipment had gone missing has been interpreted by some as sign of a possible cover-up on the part of Iran.
Nevertheless, a senior diplomat familiar with the IAEA's Iran investigation said the information had not set alarm bells within the agency at this stage, since it was only one piece of a large apparatus, a container-like vessel, that had been removed, while all the other more important components remained in place.
Iranian ambassador Soltanieh said Iran would insist that IAEA chief Yukiya Amano correct the offending paragraph in the report.
Asked where the equipment now was, Soltanieh replied: "Everything is as it was. Everything is there. They just make a fuss out of something which was not correct."
Soltanieh also said that Iran would continue to enrich uranium to around 20 percent purification in case a fuel supply deal for a reactor making radio-isotopes for cancer treatment fell through.
"As long as the fuel is not in the core of the reactor, we cannot be sure" that Iran will actually get it, the ambassador said.
"We have a serious confidence deficit regarding the fuel supply," Soltanieh said.
"Since we have been facing an absence of any legally binding assurance of supply, we have to have our own fuel. We have to have the fuel back-up, contingency for both Bushehr power plant and the Tehran Research Reactor," he said.
Earlier this year, Iran started enriching uranium to 20 percent purification, ostensibly to make the fuel for the research reactor.
In its latest report, the IAEA said Iran had produced at least 5.7 kilos (12.5 pounds) of the higher-enriched uranium.
The uranium enrichment activities are at the heart of western fears about Iran's nuclear programme, because enriched uranium can be used not only to produce energy, but also the fissile core of an atomic bomb.
Last October, the United States, France and Russia proposed taking Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium and turn it into to the fuel rods for the reactor.
But Iran refused to take up the offer and has drawn up an alternative deal with Brazil and Turkey instead.
The west, for its part, says the new deal does not go far enough and it argues that Iran does not need to enrich to 20 percent, because it does not have the technology to turn that material into the fuel rods for the reactor.
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