Developer Seymour Sweeney has claimed that UNESCO gave him favourable signals on his proposals for a new private sector centre.

But the Paris-based organisation has told the Belfast Telegraph it is sticking by its previous standpoint - which is at odds with his scheme.

UNESCO - the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation - issued a keynote report on the Causeway in 2003.

Drawn up after a mission team visited the site, the document concluded that a new centre should be built in the "footprint" of the visitor facility destroyed by fire in 2000.

It said this should involve no "extension in size and height" to the previous premises and "no additional development" should be permitted in the vicinity.

Mr Sweeney's proposals involve a new visitor centre on an alternative site which he owns.

It would also be larger than the premises which burnt down.

The developer last week said he had previously met with a UNESCO heritage chief, Dr Mechtild Rossler, and she had been "impressed" with his plans.

When contacted by the Belfast Telegraph this week, Dr Rossler said the 2003 mission team's findings had been "quite clear".

She added: "We were absolutely clear that any new visitor centre must be built in the footprint of the centre that was burnt down.

"That is my position and I am not moving one millimetre from that."

Mr Sweeney last night again said Dr Rossler had been positive during his meeting with her in Paris in 2001.

"We intend to meet with her again if the scheme gets the go-ahead," he added.

DUP Environment Minister Arlene Foster last week said she saw " considerable merit" in Mr Sweeney's scheme and was minded to approve it.

The Giant's Causeway is Northern Ireland's only UNESCO World Heritage site.

Critics of last week's Ministerial announcement have claimed that commercial development in the area could jeopardise this international status.

In 2001, London Government Minister Baroness Blackstone wrote to the DoE expressing concern that the National Trust may ask UNESCO to include the Causeway on its "at risk" register.

She warned that such a classification would cause "severe embarrassment" to the UK.

Mr Sweeney has maintained that his plans will create a "world-class" centre and have been put together by an expert team with a "global track record" including work at other world heritage sites.

The National Trust told MLAs at the Assembly's Enterprise committee yesterday that the developer's Causeway centre plans do not conform with UNESCO's requirements "in any shape or form".