Iran to continue atomic work despiteUN resolution

Iran said yesterday it would press ahead with its nuclear programme despite an "illegal" UN resolution imposing new financial and arms sanctions.

"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 website www.president.ir.

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

"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 sanctions would stay in place until Iran halts the enrichment of uranium and the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, which can be used to make a bomb or to generate power. Iran has 60 days to comply or face possible new sanctions.

Major powers have previously said negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme could not begin until Tehran halts uranium enrichment.

A government spokesman said Iran would limit its cooperation with the UN watchdog, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.

The adoption of the 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 said 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.