The world approved a bitterly negotiated climate deal Sunday but poorer nations most at the mercy of worsening disasters dismissed a $300 billion a year pledge from wealthy historic polluters as insultingly low.

After two exhausting weeks of chaotic bargaining and sleepless nights, nearly 200 nations banged through the contentious finance pact in the early hours in a sports stadium in Azerbaijan.

But the applause had barely subsided in Baku when India delivered a full-throated rejection of the dollar-figure just agreed.

UN atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on Wednesday welcomed Iran's "concrete step" on agreeing to cap its stockpile of highly enriched uranium after Tehran implemented preparatory steps to stop adding to its inventory.

"I think this is ... a concrete step in the right direction -- we have a fact which has been verified by us," Grossi told reporters in Vienna.

"I attach importance to the fact that for the first time... since the distancing of Iran from its past obligations, they are taking a different direction," he said.

Hezbollah's leader delivered a defiant speech on Wednesday, saying Israel cannot impose conditions for a truce in Lebanon, as visiting US envoy Amos Hochstein headed to Israel to try to negotiate an end to the war.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, in a near-simultaneous statement, said any ceasefire deal must ensure Israel still has the "freedom to act" against Hezbollah.

European powers and the United States have submitted a resolution censuring Iran for its lack of cooperation on its nuclear dossier, despite the head of the UN watchdog on Wednesday welcoming "a concrete step" by Iran to cap its uranium stockpile.

As a board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) started in Vienna, diplomats told AFP that Paris, Berlin, London and Washington formally tabled a censure motion critical of Iran.

The resolution is expected to come to a vote on Thursday, the diplomats said.

The United States on Wednesday vetoed a UN Security Council push to call for a ceasefire in Gaza that Washington said would have emboldened Hamas.

The resolution demanded "an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire" in the war between Israel and the Palestinian group, along with "the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages."

But Israel's UN ambassador Danny Danon said the resolution "was not a path to peace, it was a road map to more terror, more suffering and more bloodshed.

Lebanese footballer Celine Haidar was about to make her dream of playing for the national women's team come true, but debris from an Israeli strike left the 19-year-old in a medically induced coma.

After full-blown war erupted in September, Haidar's family were among more than a million people who fled south Beirut and other Hezbollah strongholds, as Israeli bombs rained down.

"But Celine had to come back to (south) Beirut for her studies and training," her father Abbas Haidar told AFP.

Iraq is holding its first nationwide census in nearly four decades this week, a long-awaited count in a nation that has been blighted by sectarian and ethnic divisions.

The census is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, and will provide sorely needed up-to-date demographic data for the country which has an estimated population of around 44 million.

It will be the first census to cover all 18 governorates since 1987, when dictator Saddam Hussein was in power, following repeated delays caused by years of war and political tensions between factions.

Senior US and Israeli officials will meet in early December to address American concerns over harm to civilians caused by military operations in Gaza, the State Department said Tuesday.

The United States has regularly voiced concerns to key ally Israel over American-supplied weapons being used in strikes that have killed civilians in the Gaza Strip.

However, it has only once exercised the ultimate US leverage -- holding some of the billions of dollars in military aid to Israel.

An Afghan teacher and a jailed lawyer from Tajikistan on Tuesday won the Martin Ennals Award, one of the world's most prestigious rights prizes, with the jury hailing their "exceptional courage".

Zholia Parsi, a teacher from Kabul who began protesting for women's rights after the Taliban returned to power three years ago, shared the prize with lawyer Manuchehr Kholiqnazarov, who is serving a 16-year prison sentence in connection with his human rights work.

Israeli organisation Amana, a movement that backs developing settlements in the occupied West Bank, on Tuesday denounced sanctions imposed on it by the United States the previous day.

A statement by the group said the sanctions "result from baseless slander directed at Amana by hostile and extremist elements".

"Had the US administration bothered to verify the claims... it would have found them to be factually unfounded and refrained from taking action against us," the statement said.