France, Britain and Germany are drafting a UN nuclear resolution on Iran that could set them on course for a confrontation with Tehran at an International Atomic Energy Agency board meeting next week.
The IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, issued a report last week praising Iran for granting UN inspectors access to sites, but said it has continued to change its story about imports of nuclear technology that could be used to develop atomic weapons.
"The three Europeans'...draft resolution is going to say that there are areas where Iran has been cooperating with the agency and areas where they haven't been cooperating," a Western diplomat on the IAEA's board of governors told Reuters.
"It will also tell them (the Iranians) to cooperate more," the diplomat said, adding that the point of the resolution will be to keep the inspection process going.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, wants to be off the IAEA board's agenda as a special item, but diplomats on the board said the resolution would likely keep Tehran on the agenda for some time.
Iran said it had done everything necessary to clear up concerns about the program, which the United States said could be used to make atomic bombs. "Iran has answered all ambiguities on its nuclear activities and there is nothing left on the table," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mr Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference.
IAEA chief Mr Mohamed ElBaradei said today the agency hoped to it could wind up its probe into Iran's nuclear program within the next few months. He also said he hoped a second dossier Tehran has provided - after its first report was found to be incomplete - was now the full picture of the nuclear program.
The United Nations has been investigating Iran since an exiled Iranian opposition group reported in August 2002 that Tehran was hiding a massive uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and other sites from UN inspectors.
The IAEA's new Iran report and the draft resolution prepared by the European Union's "big three" will be the main topics of discussion at a meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board that begins on June 14th.
The Europeans have been working with Iran since last year to get them to end their uranium enrichment program in exchange for peaceful nuclear technology. The Iranians agreed to suspend enrichment activities but, to the annoyance of the Europeans, have yet to fully put the program into abeyance.