Iran deal sought to avert atom pact talks collapse

VIENNA, May 6 (Reuters) A 130-nation meeting on how to fix the fraying nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty faces collapse tomorrow unless Iran accepts a last-minute South African proposal to overcome its objections to the agenda.

The gathering, due to run two weeks to May 11, was meant to set priorities to flesh out at follow-up annual meetings leading to the next decision-making NPT Review Conference in 2010.

But the session quickly snagged on procedural rows with a strong whiff of the standoff between Western powers and Iran over its suspected non-compliance with NPT safeguards, pre-empting debate on proposals to reinforce the treaty.

''I think a decision will come tomorrow whether we will have to go home with nothing to show for this meeting ... because it was taken hostage by Iran,'' said a senior European diplomat.

The NPT binds members without nuclear bombs not to acquire them, guarantees the right of all members to nuclear energy for peaceful ends, and obligates the original five nuclear powers from the post-World War Two era to dismantle arsenals in stages.

Iran blamed arch-foe the United States for the impasse, accusing it of authoring an agenda text designed to single out Tehran as the main NPT offender and muzzle criticism of big powers over their slowness to phase out nuclear arsenals.

Washington has not answered Iran's broadside and has stayed out of sparring between Western allies and Iran over its hold-up of the required consensus for the meeting's agenda.

DISARMAMENT A senior Western official said the United States was keeping a low profile, pointing out that many developing nations in the Non-Aligned Movement to which Iran belongs were not happy with Tehran's manoeuvring, and that it was a major NAM nation, South Africa, that had intervened to overcome the Iranian challenge.

Pretoria proposed that the agenda phrase in dispute -- ''reaffirming the need for full compliance'' with the NPT -- be clarified with an attached declaration saying this meant compliance ''with all provisions'' of the treaty.

Meeting chairman Japan will seek consensus for the idea when proceedings resume tomorrow. Iran promised to consider it.

The semantic tweak was designed to assure Iran that debate would also push states with atomic bombs to do more to heed pledges to do away with them, not just pinion Tehran for defying UN resolutions to suspend nuclear activity.

The Islamic Republic rejects as unfounded Western suspicions that it is covertly trying to build atom bombs behind the facade of a civilian nuclear energy programme within terms of the NPT.

But UN sanctions have been imposed on Iran, which has not fully cooperated with UN nuclear watchdog investigations begun after sensitive Iranian atomic research came to light.

Disarmament campaigners making presentations to the meeting said Iran, as well as North Korea which bolted from the NPT in 2003 and detonated a nuclear device last year, pose serious risks to the treaty's integrity.

But they said plans by nuclear-armed states to upgrade their weapons, even if that means reducing their overall number, and keep them as symbols of strength have eroded respect for the NPT and may spur some nations in unstable regions to circumvent it.

Other bad examples, they say, include the failure of big powers like the United States and China to ratify an atomic test ban treaty, and a US nuclear technology pact with India, which built atom bombs without penalty by staying out of the NPT.

REUTERS KK RK1905