VIENNA, July 31: It would take at least three days to convene an emergency meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog agency if the crisis over Iran’s nuclear programme were to escalate, an agency spokesman said on Sunday.

It would take “at least 72 hours” to convene an emergency meeting in Vienna of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation board of governors, which could then send the Iranian dossier to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions against Tehran, said the spokesman, who asked not to be named.

The IAEA has been investigating Iran’s nuclear programme since February 2003 on US charges that the Islamic republic is secretly developing nuclear weapons.

The United States wants Iran brought before the Security Council but is backing a European Union diplomatic effort to get Iran to guarantee it will not make nuclear weapons.

Britain warned Iran on Sunday against taking the “damaging step” of resuming nuclear fuel work and said that if the Iranians persist, the EU “will as a first step consult urgently with our partners on the board of the IAEA, which is monitoring Iran’s nuclear plans”.

On Sunday, Iran seemed ready to push forward with its nuclear program.

A source in Tehran said after a meeting of Iran’s top security body that Iran would inform the IAEA on Monday that it is resuming sensitive uranium conversion activities, which will then restart immediately.

The Iranian warning has dramatically raised the stakes in a more than two-year standoff over its nuclear programme and risks seeing the Islamic Republic hauled before the Security Council, which could impose punishing economic sanctions.

The IAEA currently has inspectors in Iran, although not necessarily at the uranium conversion site in Isfahan where the Iranians plan on resuming work related to uranium enrichment, a diplomat in Vienna said.—AFP