Iran to ditch fuel plan if US imposes new sanctions

Iran will abandon an offer to ship some of its uranium stockpile abroad if the United States imposes new sanctions, its parliament speaker said on Sunday.

Iran is due to notify the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Monday of a deal struck last week with Brazil and Turkey which it had hoped would avert new UN sanctions sought by the West to pressure Tehran over its nuclear activities. But speaker Ali Larijani, an influential conservative and Iran's former nuclear negotiator, said Washington's continued determination to impose sanctions could even lead Tehran to review its cooperation with the UN nuclear agency. "If the Americans want to seek adventure, whether in the UN Security Council or in Congress, all the efforts of Turkey and Brazil will be in vain and this path will be abandoned," he said in remarks carried by state broadcaster IRIB. Just hours after the leaders of Iran, Brazil and Turkey celebrated the deal last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that all five UN Security Council members had agreed a draft sanctions resolution. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his cabinet the Security Council "would have no credit left" if the sanctions went ahead. The Tehran agreement contained several elements of a nuclear fuel swap deal brokered by the IAEA last October in talks involving Iran, France, Russia and the United States but which soon unravelled amid Iranian demands for amendments.