VIENNA/TEHRAN, Sept 13: As pressure mounted on Iran to prove by Oct 31 that it had no secret atomic weapons programme, Tehran warned it might follow North Korea’s lead and quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

“We could at first limit our cooperation with the IAEA to a minimum, to that which we have committed ourselves,” Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s ambassador to IAEA, said in an interview with a German weekly, Der Spiegel.

“We could also put a stop to cooperation. And as a last measure, I cannot rule out that we could withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).”

Following intense US lobbying for action against Iran, the 35-nation governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) passed a resolution on Friday demanding Iran answer all outstanding questions about its nuclear programme.

The resolution implies that if the IAEA still has doubts about Iran’s atomic programme in November, its board might declare Iran in breach of international obligations and report it to the UN Security Council for possible economic sanctions.

Approval of the resolution ignited the wrath of Tehran. Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna, Ali Akbar Salehi, said it showed Washington intended to invade Iran as it had Iraq.

In an interview in the German weekly Der Spiegel, he expressed anger at US desires to stop Iran from enriching uranium, due to Washington’s fears Tehran might be purifying it for use in a bomb.

The resolution calls on Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment activities for the time being and not to introduce uranium to its enrichment plant at Natanz.

Surprisingly, Russia — which diplomats said had fought hard to weaken the US-backed language of the resolution to protect billions of dollars of future nuclear deals with Tehran — threw its political weight behind the deadline and publicly backed it.

“(The resolution) is a serious and respectful appeal by the agency for Iran to cooperate with IAEA...and do so without delay,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak told Interfax.

If Iran were declared in non-compliance with its IAEA nuclear Safeguards Agreement — a key part of the NPT — and reported to the Security Council for sanctions, Tehran could lose the right to any foreign nuclear assistance.

That means Russia would lose out on a nearly one billion dollars deal to construct the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran.

Tehran denies US allegations that it has violated the NPT in an effort to develop atomic weapons secretly.

WHAT IRAN MUST DO BY OCT 31: Friday’s resolution said Iran must fully cooperate with the IAEA to enable it to verify the “non-diversion of nuclear materials” to a secret weapons programme.

By the end of October, Iran must give the IAEA a “full declaration” of uranium enrichment-related imports, especially “imported equipment and components stated to have been contaminated with highly enriched uranium particles”.

The IAEA’s discovery of weapons-grade enriched uranium at an enrichment facility at Natanz sparked fears it has already learned how to make bomb-grade uranium.

Iran blamed the uranium on contaminated components bought abroad, an explanation that has met with widespread scepticism.

Tehran must also grant “unrestricted access” to IAEA inspectors throughout the country and permit them to take environmental samples wherever they choose. Tehran has refused to let IAEA inspectors to take samples at some sites.

REACTION AT HOME: The resolution immediately sparked some calls here for the country’s clerical leadership to follow the path of North Korea and pull out of the NPT.

State television said in a commentary that the resolution was political, and directed by the United States and the Zionist regime (Israel).

The Jomhuri Eslami newspaper wrote that Iran should not pay any attention to the US, the Europeans and international organisations... and accept that the right path is the one that the North Koreans have chosen.

And the Kayhan newspaper, which also advocated pulling out of the NPT, accused European Union countries and the United States of seeking to completely disarm Iran and convert it to weak and feeble country like Iraq in order to overrun it.

The paper said ambassadors of Japan, Australia and Canada — the countries that submitted the resolution during the Vienna meeting — should be expelled from Tehran and only allowed back when they apologise.

Before the resolution was passed, powerful former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said in a Friday prayer sermon that “what is happening now in Vienna is an unjust, tyrannical and unilateral process.”—AFP