LONDON - Iran is "hell-bent" on trying to build a nuclear bomb and should try to resolve its domestic problems rather than threaten Israel, a British Foreign Office minister said Tuesday.

Kim Howells, speaking at Question Time in parliament, also attacked the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in June, which he said was "cooked-up."

The list of candidates for the election had been "personally picked by a kind of fascist theocracy," said Howells, who is responsible for the Middle East region in the Foreign Office. He was responding to a question by a member of parliament regarding Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

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"It is very difficult to understand why Iran makes these threats in the way that it does," Howells replied. "When I speak with the Iranian ambassador, for example, he tries to tell me that this is a kind of a rhetorical device."

"I don't think that's what international diplomacy can afford to be about these days. Especially not from a country that is hell-bent, as far as I can read it, on developing a nuclear bomb," he added.