Iran angrily stayed away Monday from a UN atomic agency forum on creating a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, amid growing tensions over Tehran's suspected efforts to develop the bomb.

Iran's ambassador to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ali Asghar Soltanieh said Tehran's decision was its "first reaction" to the body's "inappropriate" recent report on its nuclear programme.

That assessment saw the IAEA come the closest yet to accusing Iran outright of seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran, hit by four rounds of UN sanctions, says its activities are exclusively for peaceful purposes.

On Friday, the IAEA's board of governors passed a resolution of "deep and increasing concern" submitted by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Germany and 12 others in light of the report.

US news outlets have reported that Washington was set to unveil new sanctions against Iran on Monday targeting its financial, oil and petrochemical sectors.

Soltanieh said another reason for not attending the two-day forum, aimed at learning from the experiences of other so-called nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZ), was Israel's unofficial atomic arsenal.

"The Zionist regime (Israel)... is pursuing secret nuclear activities which are worrying for the international community," Soltanieh told Iranian television channel Al-Alam.

"As long as the Zionist regime does not belong to the NPT (nuclear non-proliferation treaty) and does not cooperate with international organisations... this kind of conference is useless and cannot succeed."

Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons but has never confirmed it. Unlike Iran it is not a signatory to the NPT and therefore not subject to IAEA inspections.

Syria, reported by the IAEA to the Security Council over a suspected covert reactor allegedly bombed by Israel in 2007, was however present at the forum, along with Israel, 17 other Mideast states and Palestinian representatives.

NWFZ treaties prohibit the production, acquisition or stationing of nuclear weapons, and also ban nuclear testing.

Zones of this kind already exist in Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa and Central Asia, emcompassing 113 countries.

IAEA member states requested in 2000 that such a Mideast forum take place but agreement on holding such a meeting remained elusive until now.

The forum comes ahead of a conference in 2012 to be hosted by Finland on ridding the powder keg region, rocked this year by Arab Spring popular uprisings in several countries, of nuclear weapons.

IAEA head Yukiya Amano, opening the forum, conceded there were "long-standing differences of view" on creating such a zone and the application of agency safeguards to all nuclear activities in the region.

"It has taken 11 years to get to this point," Amano said. "I hope it will nurture fresh thinking -- creative thinking."

US to unveil new sanctions on Iran: reports
Washington (AFP) Nov 21, 2011 - The United States is to unveil new sanctions against Iran Monday targeting its financial, oil and petro-chemical sectors, according to briefings by US officials to several American news outlets.

The reported sanctions aim to up the pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program after a report by the UN atomic energy watchdog strongly suggesting Iran was researching nuclear weapons.

They also follow US allegations last month that Iranian officials were involved in a thwarted plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

Iran has strongly denied both that it wants it a nuclear aresenal and that it had any hand in the alleged plot.

According to unidentified US officials quoted Monday on the websites of the Wall Street Journal and ABC television, the United States is to declare the Iranian financial sector of "primary money-laundering concern."

That phrase activates a section of the US Patriot Act, and would effectively warn European, Asian and Latin American businesses away from Iran if they want to continue to do business with the United States.

The Wall Street Journal noted that, when the same measure was used against Lebanese and North Korean banks in recent years, there were immediate runs on deposits in those countries.

ABC's website also said Britain and Canada would announce coordinated unilateral sanctions on Iran that would further tighten the financial noose.

The US officials giving the briefings further said that US sanctions would be applied to goods and services used in Iran's oil and petro-chemical industries, preventing foreign investment.

The New York Times last Friday quoted an unnamed Western official as saying European nations were expected to follow suit with their own sanctions later this week.

The reported move against Iran's financial sector generally appeared to be a way for Western nations to hobble Iran's economy without going directly after the obvious target: Iran's central bank.

US and European officials have said they were worried that hitting the central bank with sanctions could send oil prices abruptly soaring as Iran's big oil exports had a harder time getting to market.

Instead, the reported generalized sanction gave foreign businesses and governments time to phase out dealings with Iran's central bank, the US officials said in their briefings.

"This says: 'You should be thinking quite seriously about cutting off your ties to the central bank," one official was quoted as telling the Wall Street Journal.