JERUSALEM (AFP)---Israel on Monday urged the international community not to make concessions to its top foe Iran over its nuclear drive, just days before world powers are to hold key talks on the issue with Tehran. 

 "Iran threatens Israel, peace and the entire world. Against this malicious intention, the world's leading countries must show determination, not weakness," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a meeting late Monday.   

"They do not need to make concessions to Iran. They need to set clear and unequivocal demands before it: Iran must halt all enrichment of nuclear material. It must remove from its territory all nuclear material that has been enriched up until now and it must dismantle the underground nuclear facility
in Qom.   

"Only thus will it be possible to ensure that Iran will not have a nuclear bomb. This is Israel's position; it has not changed and it will not change."   

Netanyahu spoke ahead of a Wednesday meeting in Baghdad between Iran and the so-called P5+1 group -- the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany -- for a second round of discussions after the talks were revived
in Istanbul last month following a 15-month breakdown.   

Israel is reportedly concerned that the upcoming talks could ultimately end with a deal that would allow Tehran to continue enriching uranium.   

Earlier Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said that he expected Iran to try and create the "appearance of progress" to relieve world pressure duringthe Baghdad talks.   

"I predict that the Iranians will try and create an appearance of progress which will relieve some of the pressure on them and extract a response which will not see the sanctions tightened," Ehud Barak's office quoted him as telling senior members of his Independence party.   

Barak, who last week met US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta for their third session of talks in the Pentagon in as many months, said he had made Israel's position clear in his talks with US government officials in Washington.   

"Israel thinks the threshold should be set in a way that doesn't leave a window open for Iranian progress, through a demand to stop enrichment, both to 20 percent and also to 3.5 percent," Barak said on Monday.   

Israel also insists that all nuclear-enriched material be taken out of Iran, he added.
   

"In exchange, the Iranians can certainly receive isotopes for medical treatment or fuel rods for the research reactor in Tehran, these things need to be resolved,' Barak said.
   

The West and Israel suspects that Iran is using its nuclear programme to build
atomic weapons.   

Israel considers Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad often launches vitriolic attacks on the Jewish state and has dismissed the Holocaust as a "myth", as its top foe.   

The Jewish state has consistently warned a nuclear-armed Iran would pose an
existential threat to the Jewish state, and has refused to rule out a pre-emptive strike in a bid to halt it.