The Islamic republic's top nuclear negotiator, hardliner Ali Larijani, also said Tehran would base its business dealings with individual countries - especially in the oil sector - on whose side they took in the dispute.

He was speaking as Britain, France and Germany lobbied members of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to haul Iran before the UN Security Council over "breaches" of international atomic safeguards.

"If you want to use the language of force, Iran will be left with no choice, in order to preserve its technical achievements, to get out of the framework of the NPT and out of the framework of the additional protocol, and resume enrichment," Larijani warned in a news conference.

He later elaborated: "If our dossier is sent to the Security Council, we will cease the application of the additional protocol" - a clause that gives reinforced inspection powers to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"Concerning the NPT, it depends how they will send our case to the Security Council," he said, without elaborating on what precisely could trigger Iran to abandon the cornerstone of the UN's fight against the spread of nuclear arms.

Speaking to AFP, national security spokesman Ali Agha Mohammadi only said that leaving the NPT altogether was "part of the scenarios we have examined".

"By giving this press conference we wanted to tell the Europeans that they... should not make a strategic error," he said.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only, and argues that it merely wants to access atomic energy technology as a signatory of the NPT. Nuclear bombs, it asserts, are "un-Islamic".

But enrichment technology can be diverted to produce nuclear weapons, and the country is under mounting US and EU pressure to abandon fuel cycle work altogether.

Larijani also warned that states which lined up with the Europeans and US against Iran would suffer consequences when it came to their involvement with Iran's oil sector.

"Those countries that have economic transactions with Iran, especially in the field of oil, have not defended Iran's rights so far," complained Larijani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.

This top decision-making body, he added, was "very determined to make a balance between these two things, so based on how much they defend Iran's national right will facilitate their participation in Iran's economic field."

He did not refer to oil sales by Iran - OPEC's second producer - but was later asked if this meant countries like Japan, recently awarded a major contract to develop Iran's Azadegan oil field, could lose contracts.

"It is not only Japan but other countries that are concerned. We will examine their attitude," Larijani said.

The IAEA has been investigating Iran since February 2003 and has uncovered suspect activities, but no "smoking gun" that proves a weapons drive.

But the EU-3 effort to now refer Iran to the Security Council ends weeks of speculation about how strongly the West would move to counter Iran after it resumed uranium conversion work, a precursor to enrichment, last month.

The fuel work torpedoed two years of talks with the three EU countries, who want Iran to abandon fuel cycle work as the best "objective guarantee" it will not seek weapons.

"The Europeans have been trying to humiliate the Iranians. Do not doubt that enrichment is a national desire," Larijani said, comparing the nuclear crisis to Iran's struggle to nationalise its oil industry from British control in the 1950s.

"The Europeans keep telling us of this big giant - the UN Security Council. But this will not mean the end of the Iranian people," he said.

Earlier, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also declared that "the great Iranian nation today, stronger than before and with a determined will to reach its aims and goals, stands solidly and will not surrender to any sort of pressure and threat."

Iran's new hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who on Saturday gave a fiery speech to the UN General Assembly and refused to abandon nuclear work, also insisted on state television late Monday that "our position remains the same and will not change."

All rights reserved. � 2004 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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