Iran implements decision to limit IAEA cooperation

Tehran: Iran cut back cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog yesterday, carrying out its promised response to new Security Council sanctions, an Iranian news agency said.

Iran's government decided on Sunday to limit cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a day after the Security Council voted unanimously to step up sanctions on the Islamic Republic over its disputed nuclear programme.

Along with Iran's capture last Friday of 15 British navy personnel in the Gulf, heightened tension over the Iran's atomic ambition has led to oil price rises in international markets.

"Exercising the government's decision to limit cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency started from today," the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

The government's information secretariat handed a decree to Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation on the matter. "Based on this official order, the Atomic Energy Organisation is obliged to carry this out and send a notice to the IAEA," Mehr said.

It did not give details, but a government spokesman said on Sunday the move would impact Iran's cooperation with the so-called "subsidiary arrangements" with the IAEA.

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.