Iran limits cooperation with IAEA

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Sunday it would limit cooperation with the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog and vowed not to halt its atomic programme "even for one second" following new financial and arms sanctions.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved the sanctions on Saturday for Tehran's refusal to suspend its programme, but major powers also offered new talks and renewed an economic and technological incentive package offer.

An Iranian government spokesman said Iran would limit its cooperation with the U.N. watchdog, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, in retaliation.

"Iran will not stop its peaceful and legal nuclear trend even for one second because of such an illegal resolution," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on his Web site www.president.ir.

"The Iranian nation will not forget those who backed and those who rejected (the resolution), while adjusting its international relations," he said without indicating what that adjustment in ties would entail.

The adoption of the U.N. resolution will affect Iran's cooperation with the so-called "subsidiary arrangements" with the IAEA, spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said on state television.

A senior Iranian nuclear official told Reuters these arrangements, accepted by Iran in 2002, meant Iran would declare any plans it had to build new atomic-related facilities.

By suspending its cooperation with this agreement, it would inform the IAEA only six months before introducing nuclear material into any new facility, said the official, who asked not to be identified.