Tuesday, April 25 2006 13:53 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Tehran: Iran's top nuclear negotiator said today (Apr 25, 2006) that Iran will withdraw from all cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency if the U.N. Security Council imposes sanctions against it.

The statements by Ali Larijani came a day after Iran's president facing a Friday U.N. deadline to stop uranium enrichment boldly predicted the Security Council would not impose sanctions on Tehran and and warned he was thinking about dropping out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Larijani, speaking to an international conference on Iran's energy programme, today said flatly that if the Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran, the country would suspend its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which oversees compliance with the treaty.

"They (the Western countries on the IAEA board) haveto understand they cannot resolve this issue through force," Larijani said.