Iranian student leaders said Sunday a crackdown on protests against Islamic clerical rule could make them adopt more radical and violent methods.

An unidentified Iranian university student speaks with Mehdi Karroubi(R), Iran's Speaker of Parliament, inside the parliament building in Tehran, June 22, 2003. [Reuters]

The warning was made as the UN's nuclear watchdog called on Iran to ease concerns about its atomic program. Washington accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, but Tehran says its program is only for electricity.

The student leaders gathered outside parliament to protest against what they said were the arrests of hundreds of colleagues after a wave of demonstrations, hailed by the United States as a cry for freedom.

"Even if they send us to prison and take us to solitary confinement there are others who have more daring slogans than us and they will confront the system with more violent methods," Saeed Razavi Faqih, one of the student leaders, told Reuters.

"Today we are sitting on a keg of gunpowder. Anyone who wants to play with this fire will be burned."

The protests began in Tehran two weeks ago and spread to other cities in the most outspoken demonstrations since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. Officials say 500 "hooligans" were arrested during recent protests in Tehran but only a handful of students were among them.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose country branded Iran a member of an "axis of evil" along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea, said Sunday Washington wanted to encourage and support "those...seeking the right to speak out."

"But for some to go beyond that and say the United States is getting ready for something aggressive or looking for another place to have a conflict, it is absolutely wrong," he told a session of a World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan.

Washington has warned it reserves the right to use military action to prevent Iran making nuclear weapons, but says this is just one of many options and low on the agenda.

Iran, sandwiched between Iraq and Afghanistan where Washington now has strong military presences, accuses US officials of interfering in its internal affairs. It denies any military nuclear ambitions and rejects other US accusations of involvement in terrorism.

UN WATCHDOG CALL TO IRAN

Iran says it is ready to work more closely with UN inspectors, but has refused to allow samples to be taken from a facility where components for uranium enrichment equipment were assembled. It says the site is non-nuclear.

"We have seen some cooperation, but I'd like to see that cooperation accelerated... extended," Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told Reuters Sunday.

His agency reprimanded Iran Thursday for repeatedly failing to report nuclear material, facilities and activities as required under an agreement with the IAEA.

While venting most of their anger at the conservative opponents of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, protesters have also called on him to resign for failing to deliver promised reforms in justice, democracy and social freedoms after six years in power.

Diplomats said the arrests appeared to be aimed at snuffing out the protests, which have all but fizzled out.

Among those arrested was the son of a reformist member of parliament. Students said it highlighted the impotence of Khatami's government compared with powerful unelected conservative clerics who have opposed his reformist agenda.

Some 166 of the 290 lawmakers signed a statement condemning the arrests and attacks on student dormitories by vigilantes loyal to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Outside Iran, the head of the main exiled opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), was placed under formal investigation by a French judge Sunday and remanded in pre-trial custody.

Maryam Rajavi and 16 followers are under investigation for possible links to terrorism after raids last week in which 159 suspected members of the People's Mujahideen, the military arm of the NCRI, were rounded up by French police.

The son of the late Shah of Iran, toppled in the 1979 revolution, said it was only a matter of time before the present Iranian administration fell and called on the United States and the rest of the international community to back the protesters.

"Clearly the regime is panicking," Reza Pahlavi, who lives in exile in the United States, told CNN.

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