AFP - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad defended Iran's controversial nuclear programme on Thursday, during a visit to Damascus by Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, and promised that cooperation between the two countries would continue.

Assad asserted "the right of Iran and other countries that are signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich unranium for civilian purposes," the official SANA news agency said.

Assad's remarks followed comments by Iranian former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani urging his country's feuding political factions to stand together in the face of foreign pressure on Tehran over its nuclear programme.

After his meeting with Assad, Jalili told a joint news conference with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem that Iran required uranium enriched to 20 percent, which he described as "a legitimate right," and added that the UN nuclear watchdog "should help all its members to acquire atomic energy."

Last Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency passed a vote of censure against Iran calling on it to halt construction of a second uranium enrichment plant near the central shrine city of Qom.

For his part, Muallem said that Syria believed in a "political solution" to the standoff with the West over Iran's nuclear programme. "We hope that this will not come to a confrontation between Iran and the West," he said.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang also said on Thursday that Beijing hoped "to see the early settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiation."

Tehran confirmed on Wednesday its intention to produce strongly enriched uranium, in defiance of last week's IAEA resolution.

Syria has been a close ally of Iran for the past three decades, having sided with it against Iraq in the two neighbours' 1980-88 war.