Iranian speaker issues veiled warning following UN resolution

Tehran - The Iranian parliament speaker on Sunday warned of "new decisions" by Tehran following the latest United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the country, ISNA news agency reported.

"While the course of the talks in the recent weeks was going towards setting a new timetable for further negotiations, suddenly the 5+1 (Security Council permanent members plus Germany) came up with this new showpiece," Ali Larijani said.

The new resolution on Saturday called on Iran to "comply fully" with past UN demands to halt its uranium-enrichment programmes.

"This kind of approach turns the negotiations into a cheap game and there may be the need for other decisions in this political diversion," the speaker added.

Larijani, who also used to work as chief nuclear negotiator, gave no details on what decisions he alluded to, but observers believe that the parliament may urge the government to revise its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The 15-nation council unanimously adopted the resolution and asked Iran to meet its obligations "without delay" as a party to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. The resolution did not contain any threat of new sanctions.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeid Jalili on Saturday called the new resolution "not constructive" and merely aimed at "showing solidarity" among the world powers.

"This new draft resolution is not constructive and will not help solving the problem either," Jalili was quoted by the official news agency IRNA as saying.

"It seems that with this repetitious resolution, (the world powers) just wanted to show their unity," added Jalili, in apparent reference to the rift dividing the United States and Europe from Russia over the conflict in Georgia. (dpa)