Both Shahriari and Masoud Ali Mohammadi, another scientist killed by a bomb in the capital in January, represented Iran on the SESAME project (Synchrotron Radiation Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East).

Tehran blames Israel and the United States for both murders.

The UNESCO-endorsed SESAME is designed not only to advance science and technology, but also to help bring about peace and stability through scientific collaboration.

Its aim is to establish a particle accelerator in Jordan comparable to that of the Geneva-based CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.

CERN's 27-kilometre (16.8-mile) circular particle accelerator buried under the French-Swiss border is recreating powerful but microscopic bursts of energy that mimic conditions close to the Big Bang that created the universe.

"If completed, the accelerator will mark the culmination of 15 years of cooperation between unlikely scientific allies," the Israeli daily Haaretz reported on November 12 of SESAME.

Several Arab states, Turkey, Israel, the Palestinians and Iran are all involved in the project, which was established in 2000.

Its viability has since been threatened by both a lack of funding and political realities in the region.

Despite having two representatives in SESAME, Israel prefers to work with the ESFR (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility), an international research institute at Grenoble in France, according to European diplomatic sources.

Several months ago, Iran's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said Tehran aimed to create its own particle accelerator.

SESAME is probably the world's only nuclear cooperation project in which Iranians and Israelis have been jointly involved.

The Jewish state, along with the United States and other world powers, accuses the Islamic republic of seeking to acquire the atomic bomb through its programme of uranium enrichment, a charge Tehran denies.

Neither Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East's sole nuclear-armed power, nor the United States has ruled out taking military action against Iran over its nuclear programme.

The conservative Iranian Internet site Mashreghnews on Monday charged that the SESAME website in English contained "the coordinates" of the two murdered Iranian scientists.

This, it said, raises "the possibility that Israeli scientists and agents of this regime are implicated in the assassinations of the Iranian scientists at SESAME."

In addition to the bombing that killed Shahriari in Tehran on Monday, a second senior scientist in Iran's nuclear programme, Fereydoon Abbasi Davani, survived a similar attack.

Tehran police chief Hossein Sajedi-nia said both men were targeted on their way to work in different parts of the capital by men on motorcycles who attached bombs to their cars.

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