EU to deplore Iran nuclear expansion at IAEA meet

VIENNA, Mar 6 (Reuters) The European Union will tell a UN nuclear meeting that Iran's bid to escalate uranium enrichment, a possible path to atom bombs, is deplorable but a negotiated solution remains possible, an EU statement said.

It was to be given to an ongoing session of the International Atomic Energy Agency's governing body scrutinising Iran's defiance of UN demands while also welcoming North Korea's agreement to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme.

IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei, using unusually strong language, said yesterday Tehran's persistent failure to open its books to IAEA inquiries into its nuclear activities after hiding them for almost 20 years set it apart from other nations.

To squeeze Iran into shelving its campaign to make nuclear fuel, six world powers yesterday launched a week of negotiations at the United Nations in New York on widening preliminary sanctions adopted in December. But a deal remained elusive due to resistance from Russia and China, big trade partners of Iran.

Iran not only ignored a February 21 UN Security Council deadline to stop refining uranium but took initial steps to shift from research-level enrichment to ''industrial-scale'' output in a bunker plant fortified against feared US attack.

Iran rejects Western suspicions that it is trying to master nuclear bomb technology under the cover of a civilian atomic energy programme, saying it only wants to generate electricity.

''The EU deplores the fact that Iran ... appears determined to pursue enrichment-related activities on an even larger scale,'' said the EU statement, expected to be delivered to the board tomorrow and obtained by Reuters today.

It bemoaned Iran's continuing refusal to allow remote camera monitoring by the UAEA in the underground Natanz hall where hundreds of centrifuges have been installed recently, part of a plan for 3,000 to lay a foundation for fullscale enrichment.

''At the same time (we) reaffirm our continuous support for efforts to find a negotiated solution. A comprehensive offer is still on the table and the door to negotiations remains open.'' To defuse the crisis, the six world powers last June offered Iran major trade benefits but the proposal has gone nowhere in part because of their precondition, rejected by Tehran, that it freeze its nuclear energy programme first.

ElBaradei told the board yesterday that IAEA inquiries were stalemated by Iranian stonewalling. He said many ''uncertainties about experiments, procurements and other activities'' left the agency unable to certify Iran's intentions were wholly peaceful.

At the meeting, expected to wind up tomorrow, the 35-nation board was expected to ratify cuts to 22 of 55 IAEA technical aid projects in Iran made by the agency's professional Secretariat. This was to uphold a December UN ban on giving Iran technology and know-how of use in producing atomic fuel.

ElBaradei goes to North Korea on March 13 to iron out details of Pyongyang's agreement, in return for major fuel aid, to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor and readmit IAEA inspectors to seal the complex by mid-April.

REUTERS MS RAI1909