By HANNAH K. STRANGE
UPI U.K. Correspondent
LONDON, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw warned Iran Wednesday it would be making "a mistake" if it continued to threaten to break off negotiations over its nuclear programs if the case was taken to the U.N. Security Council.
Straw met with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in London to discuss the decision of key powers to refer Iran to the council in March at a meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog later this week.
Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - the five permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council - met with Germany and agreed Tuesday to refer Iran over its pledge to resume uranium enrichment activities in January, with a resolution expected at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna Thursday.
The move was a victory for the Western nations, which have sought tougher action against Iran, but persuading China and Russia to go along with the decision meant prolonging the threat of Security Council action by another month to March. This, it is hoped, will provide additional time for diplomacy.
Substantive action by the council is now delayed until March, after the IAEA has delivered a formal report on the Iranian nuclear programs. Iran immediately struck out at the decision, which it said would mean an end to negotiations and to any possibility of a return to voluntary suspension.
A senior Foreign Office official, who did not wish to be named, said Straw urged Tehran to view the move, and in particular the one-month grace period, as an opportunity to reach a diplomatic agreement.
"He urged Iran to see the decision as a possible opportunity in that they have a month to take actions and they can influence the way in which the Security Council chooses to handle the issue," the official said.
Straw advised Iran that it was "counterproductive" to make the kind of threats that senior Iranian officials had been issuing publicly, he continued.
Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said Tuesday "reporting Iran's dossier to the U.N. Security Council will be unconstructive and the end of diplomacy," according to state television. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad elaborated on Tehran's position.
"We will never abandon our rights to nuclear technology and if referred to the Security Council, Iran will stop voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol," he was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency.
The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty's Additional Protocol, which Iran has signed but not ratified, gives U.N. inspectors greater powers of access to suspected sites, including spot checks. The Iranian parliament passed a bill in November requiring the government to "stop voluntary and non-legally binding measures and implement its scientific, research, and executive programs," if referred to the Security Council.
The British official said Straw advised that withdrawal of Additional Protocol cooperation would be "an own goal."
"It is actually only through offering the IAEA full cooperation that Iran will be able to satisfy the international community that its past non-compliances have been corrected," he said.
Mottaki set out the "familiar" Iranian position and did not offer anything new, he added.
Asked by United Press International if Britain viewed the threats as genuine, or simply a ratcheting up of rhetoric, the official said: "We take threats seriously."
Likewise any threats from Iran to use its regional influence to make trouble for the international community would be unwise, he said.
"We are concerned about the threats that Iran makes and the foreign secretary warned the Iranian foreign minister this morning that it would be a mistake for Iran to engage in this sort of behavior, not just because possibly it would affect U.K. interests but it would also affect the interests of countries in the region and particularly the Arab world."
While Iran has not issued any such threats explicitly, analysts have said Ahmadinejad's recent visit to Syria, during which he met with representatives of Palestinian militant groups, was designed to send a clear message. The Iranian president told reporters in Damascus that Tehran would continue to support the Palestinian struggle to "expel the (Israeli) enemy" and Lebanese Hezbollah's resistance against Israel.
Analysts have also described Iran's recent call - ultimately unsuccessful -- for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut its oil production as a message that it would be prepared to use oil as a weapon in the standoff over its nuclear programs.
Tehran's proposal in January that OPEC reduce production by one million barrels a day -- nearly 4 percent -- pushed oil prices close to $70 a barrel. Iran is OPEC'S second-largest oil producer and a halt in its output would send global oil prices rocketing to over $100, analysts have predicted.
A former British assistant chief of defense staff, Lord Timothy Garden, told UPI: "Handling Iran is very tricky at the moment because of the associated problems, Iraq not least, and the difficulty of not forcing Iran into a corner."
Iran was "playing from a remarkably strong hand," he said.
It had already warned oil prices could soar as a result of sanctions against it, and it could make things difficult for the coalition in Iraq through its connection with the country's Shiite Muslims.
Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow in nonproliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Iran's threat to break off negotiations was one the world had to take seriously.
"It's a real threat," he told UPI. "The world has to weigh that threat against the threat of taking no action, and seeing Iran move towards (weapons) capability and break one red line after another, emboldened by seeing no action from the international community."
The Iranian embassy in London did not return calls for comment.
