PURCHASE — The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations insisted last night that his country was pursuing its nuclear program because it needed the energy, not because it wanted nuclear weapons.

Iran also wants to end the current crisis over the program peacefully, he added.

"We want to resolve it through negotiations," said the ambassador, Javad Zarif. "But we want to resolve it with our rights intact."

Zarif spoke at Manhattanville College as part of a series of talks by ambassadors from various countries. He spoke briefly about the rising violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the widening gulf between the West and the Islamic world, but focused his remarks on the controversy over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Iran would be foolish to develop nuclear weapons to try to use against the United States or Israel, and this isn't something the nation would do, he argued.

"Iran will never produce, develop or acquire weapons of mass destruction," he said.

And Iran, despite its oil, is trying to develop alternative sources of energy, he said, such as nuclear and hydroelectric. If it does not, he said, Iran will become a net importer of energy within three to five decades, depending on estimates.

Zarif is a career diplomat with a Ph.D. in International Law and Policy from the Graduate School of International Studies at University of Denver.

His speech comes as the International Atomic Energy Agency prepares to take up Iran's nuclear program at a meeting March 6 and send the matter on to the United Nations Security Council for possible punitive action. The Security Council could impose sanctions or authorize other measures to force Iran to comply with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Russia has been trying to work out a compromise in which it would enrich uranium in Russia for Iran's nuclear fuel, but talks stalled at the beginning of the week.

Zarif scoffed at the Security Council, saying it was the same body that failed to act when Saddam Hussein's armies invaded his country in 1980 and when the deposed dictator used chemical weapons on his neighbor. The Security Council is held in little esteem in Iran, he said.

Also on Wednesday, Iran offered to fund a Palestinian government led by Hamas if the United States and other Western countries cut off aid to the Islamic group, which won last month's parliament elections. Hamas has refused to recognize Israel's right to exist or to renounce violence.

In an open letter to the ambassador that was published yesterday in The Journal News, the Westchester chapter of the American Jewish Committee accused Iran of being the world's premier state sponsor of terrorism by backing not only Hamas, but also Hezbollah in Lebanon and Islamic Jihad.

Last night one of its authors, Laura J. Lewis, the group's executive director, asked why he thought his nation was so isolated.

"And I would posit to you that perhaps it might have something to do with Iran's support for terrorist groups and Iran's president's declaration that Israel should wiped off the face of the earth," she said.

Zarif responded that it is the United States and Israel that are isolated from much of the Islamic world. Nor is it Iran that is a threat to Israel, he said. He read from a number of newspaper accounts reporting statements made by Israel and American officials in which they threatened Iran.