ElBaradei may cite Iran security issue in US talks

VIENNA, May 22 (Reuters) The UN nuclear watchdog chief headed today for talks in Washington where he is likely to nudge US officials to consider security assurances for Iran to defuse a crisis over Tehran's nuclear programme, diplomats said.

Mohamed ElBaradei's trip heightens a diplomatic swirl over Iran as EU leaders craft incentives for Tehran to stop enriching uranium.

Their plan will be considered at a meeting of UN Security Council powers in London on Wednesday but has already met US and Iranian scepticism.

Some EU officials, ElBaradei's International Atomic Energy Agency and many analysts believe Iran would stop activity that could lead to nuclear bomb-making only with a US pledge not to try to topple the Islamic Republic's government.

But Washington has dismissed the notion of guarantees to Iranian leaders who repeatedly call for Israel's destruction and whom it sees as orchestrators of anti-Western terrorism. Tehran, in turn, has said such guarantees could not be trusted.

''People around here tend to think the latest Western offer to Iran will be dead on arrival without U.S. involvement on security issues,'' said a Vienna-based diplomat familiar with IAEA thinking and contacts with Tehran.

The IAEA declined to comment on ElBaradei's agenda in talks he is to hold with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, intelligence chief John Negroponte and top US senators tomorrow and Wednesday.

But diplomats close to the IAEA said he was likely to stress the need for a broad accord covering trade, security and diplomatic issues to reach a durable solution to the stand-off.

''ElBaradei has been advocating (direct US engagement with Iran) since security will be a key element to any deal, and the EU alone cannot offer that, only the US can,'' said a second diplomat, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity.

MISTRUST Iran says its quest to produce low-enriched uranium is only to make electricity to bolster its economy. Western powers suspect Iran's programme is a Trojan horse for purifying uranium to the high level needed to build bombs.

ElBaradei has said Tehran must suspend enrichment activity and come clean in longrunning IAEA investigations into military links with the nuclear programme to prove its nuclear goals are wholly peaceful and improve chances of a negotiated settlement.

But he has also said Iran poses no imminent ''threat to international peace and security'', the legal underpinning for a Security Council sanctions resolution Washington wants if the EU-drafted package of incentives and threats goes nowhere.

ElBaradei has cited assessments by nuclear proliferation experts that Iran remains 3-10 years away from a bomb. Earlier this month, he hailed a Security Council decision to hold off on sanctions while the EU crafted a package of sweeteners for Iran.

It could include an offer of a light-water nuclear reactor, an assured supply from abroad of fuel for civilian atomic plants so Iran would not need to enrich uranium itself, and warnings of possible sanctions if Tehran thumbed its nose at the overture.

Some EU diplomats said Europe might also want to insert a US security pledge to Iran. But Rice denied yesterday that Washington had been asked to do so and would not in any case.

ElBaradei's talks in Washington kick off a two-week US visit in which he will give speeches at Johns Hopkins and Stanford universities and receive an award in Los Angeles.

REUTERS DKS KN2156