Environment minister Robert Hill said the government would compile a comprehensive rebuttal to a World Heritage Committee team recommendation that the Jabiluka mine be scrapped.

The government would also not insist that uranium company Energy Resources of Australia Ltd (ERA) follow the order.

``Any fair and objective reading of the report would expose its obvious flaws,'' Hill told reporters. ``It contains errors of fact, errors of law, errors of science and errors of logic.''

The commission decided earlier on Tuesday to give Australia until April to show that the uranium mine posed no threat to World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park in the remote Northern Territory.

Under the order, construction of the underground mine, which began on June 15 and was expected to take 18 months to complete, was tostop until then.

``I think that anyone who analyses our standards and our protection of world heritage areas -- those who wish to do that objectively -- would say that we have the highest standards,'' Hill said.

``We regard it is as inappropriate to tell ERA after they have passed all the Commonwealth tests, all the standards, all the demands that we required of them, that they should now desist from their mine's construction.''

The UN delegation's report said the mine posed a threat because of possible contaminated water leakages and ineffective storage of tailings. The mine would also threaten indigenous culture and would be an eyesore, it said.

Hill cited the nearby open-cut Ranger mine, which ERA has operated in Kakadu for the past 18 years, as proof that the ecologically sensitive national park was not under threat.

ERA chief executive Phillip Shirvington said the company would not stop construction at the mine site.

``It is impractical and wrong to stop a project half-way through, which hasbeen approved under Australian law by due process, and ERA will be continuing work at the site,'' Shirvington said in a statement.

The World Heritage Committee had recognised Kakadu on three separate occasions as having World Heritage values, the last time for natural and cultural values in 1993, after Ranger had been operating for 13 years and with the full knowledge that Jabiluka was going ahead, Shirvington said.

He said ERA's uranium operations were located on mineral leases that pre-dated Kakadu National Park, adding that Ranger and Jabiluka had never been part of the Park or World Heritage listing, but had been progressively surrounded by both.

``The Ranger open cut mine has been subjected to 18 years of independent assessment from a broad range of scientific bodies, all of whom have found that the operation has had no detrimental impact on Kakadu National Park,'' he said.