Iran may face same fate as N Korea: Rice

"I expect the Security Council to begin work this week on an Iran sanctions resolution," Rice told reporters. "So the Iranian government should consider the course that it is on, which could lead to simply to further isolation."

The European Union was set to back limited United Nations sanctions against Iran yesterday after Tehran spurned conditions for opening negotiations on its nuclear programme.

Diplomats said the EU's 25 foreign ministers were due to discuss possible incremental measures targeted initially at individuals and materials involved in Iranian uranium enrichment activities, which the West suspects is aimed at making a bomb.

"The most important thing is to have a united response as we showed with North Korea. We must show Iran that the international community is completely determined to remain united," European External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told reporters.

The UN Security Council unanimously voted for wide ranging sanctions against North Korea over its defiant nuclear test last week.

The United States is gathering international support to also punish Iran for defying a UN Security Council decision calling on the Islamic republic to halt uranium enrichment, a process that could lead to nuclear bomb-making.

After four rounds of unsuccessful talks aimed at securing an enrichment suspension, the European Union is set to return the Iranian nuclear file to the UN Security Council Tuesday for possible enforcement action.

"The greatest challenge to the nonproliferation regime comes from countries that violate their pledges to respect the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The North Korean regime is one such case, but also so is Iran," Rice said.

The Islamic republic is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Iranian government, she said, had been watching the developments surrounding the North Korean case and "it can now see that the international community will respond to threats from nuclear proliferation."

But Iran says it will buckle under pressure.

"Pressure and threats against Iran's nuclear programme will not affect Iran in any way," the student news agency ISNA quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying.

Uranium enrichment lies at the heart of Western concerns over Iran's nuclear programme. The process can be used to make the fuel for civil reactors but in highly extended form can also produce the fissile core of an atom bomb.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely for civilian energy purposes, but Tehran's arch-foe Israel and the United States suspect the real aim is a covert weapons programme.