Iran says sanctions like "flies," won't halt atom work

TEHRAN/DUSHANBE (Reuters) - Iran described new U.N. sanctions as a "used handkerchief that should be thrown into the waste bin" and said it would continue uranium enrichment that world powers suspect may be aimed at developing nuclear weapons.

In Vienna, Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) dismissed Wednesday's U.N. vote as another dark chapter of mistakes and miscalculations and said he hoped the major powers would reconsider their "mistakes."

A senior parliamentarian suggested Iran might reconsider the level of its co-operation with the IAEA, which is responsible for monitoring nuclear activity.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during a visit to Tajikistan: "Sanctions are falling on us from the left and the right. For us they are the same as pesky flies...We have patience and we will endure throughout all of this.

"These resolutions have no value...it is like a used handkerchief that should be thrown in the waste bin," he said in comments in Farsi translated into Russian.

Iran says its nuclear programme is for producing electricity and other peaceful uses. It has repeatedly refused to bow to international pressure to halt uranium enrichment, which can provide fuel for power plants and, if conducted to a higher level, material for bombs.

IAEA COOPERATION

"We will continue without any interruption our enrichment activities," Iranian IAEA envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh said in Vienna. "(They) will not be suspended, even for a second."

In Tehran, a senior lawmaker said Iranian MPs would review the level of the Islamic Republic's cooperation with the IAEA.

"The parliament will review Iran's cooperation level with the agency as an extra-urgent matter," Alaeddin Boroujerdi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the Security Council had damaged its position by approving the fourth round of sanctions against Iran since 2006.

"The United States, Russia, China should answer to public international opinion why they have taken such a position," Mottaki told reporters in Dublin. "Iran's nuclear is peaceful, we are against (a) nuclear bomb," he said.

(Additional reporting by Sylvia Westall and Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Marie-Louise Gumuchian in Dublin; editing by Ralph Boulton)