UNITED NATIONS — Secretary-General Annan will visit Iran during his trip to the Middle East next week, U.N. officials announced yesterday, adding that he expects to confer with President Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust denier who has repeatedly made public pleas for the annihilation of a U.N. member state.

Mr. Annan’s trip will also include a stop in Damascus, Syria, a U.N. spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said.

American officials last week attempted to deter Mr. Annan from traveling to either Iran or Syria.

The trip is intended to boost the Lebanon diplomacy effort as stipulated by the Security Council’s resolution 1701, which last week inspired a lull in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah forces in south Lebanon.

The situation in Lebanon is expected to be Mr. Annan’s main topic of discussion in Tehran, Mr. Dujarric said, but “if other issues come up, they come up.” He could not say whether the visit would take place prior to August 31, the deadline the council set for the mullah regime to agree to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

On Tuesday, Iran gave a written response to an American-backed package of incentives. The mullahs refused to suspend the program, instead calling for elaborate diplomatic negotiations. Iran’s state-owned news agencies reported that Mr. Annan’s personal appeals to Iran’s leaders had led to their offering “a new formula” for diplomatic negotiations.

Curiously, Mr. Annan’s portrait, which normally hangs prominently at the visitors’ entrance to the United Nations building in Turtle Bay along with those of past secretary-generals, was removed recently by Iran, which had donated the picture. In a statement yesterday, a U.N. spokesman said Iran had asked to take the portrait down last week so that Iranian artists could add to it the date of Mr. Annan’s final day in office, December 31.

A U.N. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said yesterday that despite the likely political pitfalls, Mr. Annan hoped the Tehran trip would lead to a diplomatic breakthrough that would leave the end of the Ghanaian-born diplomat’s 10-year scandal-ridden term with a final, legacy-defining success.

At least two reporters, one representing the New York Times and another with Paris-based La Monde, are expected to travel with Mr. Annan.

Last week, in apparent anticipation of the trip to Tehran, Mr. Annan refrained from issuing a statement condemning an exhibition initiated by Mr. Ahmadinejad in mid-August of cartoons depicting the dispute about the existence of the Holocaust.

Asked about Mr. Annan’s curious silence, Mr. Dujarric yesterday said Mr. Annan has made clear that “anyone who would try to deny the truth of the Holocaust, or who would make false claims about it, is a bigot.”

The spokesman could not explain why Mr. Annan was quick to issue a number of condemnatory statements on the publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons on Islamic terrorism but had no public response to the Tehran exhibition until he was asked about it by The New York Sun.

Mr. Annan’s last visit to Iran was in January 2002, where he met President Khatami and other top officials, but that was before the presidency of Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose Holocaust denial and repeated calls to wipe Israel “off the map” have offended many Americans, including some of Mr. Annan’s closest political allies.

Last November, when the secretary-general was first contemplating a trip to Tehran, Rep. Tom Lantos, a Democrat of California, leaned hard on Mr. Annan, a personal friend, to abandon the trip.

The appeal by Mr. Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, “was likely influential” in Mr. Annan’s decision to cancel that trip, the representative’s spokeswoman, Lynne Weil told the Sun.

Mr. Lantos was unavailable for comment yesterday. Bush administration officials also declined requests for comment, but several American and U.N. officials told the Sun recently that Washington has made clear to Mr. Annan that the administration opposed his plan to travel to Iran.

Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Dan Gillerman, who has repeatedly denounced Mr. Ahmadinejad as someone who “denies the Holocaust while planning the next one,” also declined to comment.

“I would hope the secretary-general uses his time in Damascus and Tehran wisely,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican of Florida, told the Sun yesterday, adding that Mr. Annan should demand both countries stop meddling in and smuggling weapons to Lebanon. “It is hard however to be optimistic of the U.N. taking concrete action against threats to international peace and security, considering the resolutions recently adopted on Lebanon and the U.N.’s inaction on Iran’s nuclear activity,” she said. “It’s just more of the same.”

Mr. Annan’s trip will start tomorrow in Brussels, where European Union leaders will seek to cobble together a peacekeeping force for Lebanon. Next week, he is expected to visit Beirut, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Damascus, Tehran, Riyadh, Doha, Amman, and Cairo, Mr. Dujarric said.

Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, visited Paris yesterday in an attempt to shore up more European troops for the U.N. force to Lebanon. In a joint press conference, France’s foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, said that he welcomed negotiations with Iran, but first Tehran must suspend its uranium enrichment program.

In Washington, a State Department’s spokesman, Gonzalo Gallegos, said the Iranian response Tuesday “falls short of the conditions set by the Security Council, which require the full and verifiable suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.” The statement added that America is consulting with other council members “on next steps.”

While saying that it would study the response further, the State Department did not say it planned to negotiate with the Iranians. But officials in Russia and China hailed the Iranian response, and called for a renewal of negotiations.