Iran sets talks with IAEA as new sanctions loom

Vienna, June 21: Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani will meet with the UN atomic watchdog chief on Friday but will not discuss big powers' demands for an Iranian nuclear halt, an Iranian official said today.

The United States said yesterday it and five other world powers Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China -- had begun discussing a third round of UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear defiance. But an Interfax report suggested Russia was posing a condition that could slow the process.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, said Larijani would meet IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei in Vienna on his way to exploratory talks with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Lisbon on Saturday.

Asked if Larijani might take up ElBaradei's call last week on Iran to stop expanding its uranium enrichment programme as a step towards defusing a standoff with the West, Soltanieh said: ''Suspension is out of the question, forget about it. We have repeatedly made our position very clear.'' Javad Vaeedi, Larijani's deputy, told Iranian news agency IRNA: ''Larijani and ElBaradei will discuss the continuation and strengthening of cooperation between the IAEA and Iran.'' An IAEA spokesman confirmed the meeting would take place and declined further comment.

CLEARING UP QUESTIONS Interfax quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying Moscow would approve a new sanctions resolution only after UN inspectors declared that possibilities to resolve outstanding questions about Iran's programme were exhausted.

A diplomat familiar with International Atomic Energy Agency operations said such a declaration was unlikely since it was a ''political decision'' outside the scope of a technical agency and the IAEA wanted to keep communication lines with Iran open.

UN diplomats have said the IAEA has been unable to make any headway on inquiries in Iran for some time due to Iranian stonewalling, but not that possibilities are exhausted.

Successive IAEA reports have documented declining Iranian cooperation with the agency in retaliation for UN sanctions imposed on Tehran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.

Iran says it only wants to enrich uranium to the low grade required for electricity generation, not to make atomic bombs.

In March, Iran said it would withhold early design details on planned nuclear sites from the IAEA, including a heavy-water reactor Western officials say could yield bomb-grade plutonium.

In talks with Solana in Spain on May 31, Larijani suggested Iran was ready to do more to clear up longstanding IAEA investigations into the nature and scope of its programme.

But modest new hopes for Iranian transparency deflated when Tehran reiterated that the UN Security Council would first have to return control over Iran's file to the IAEA, ending sanctions pressure.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said world powers still wanted through Solana to encourage Iran ''to find some way to say yes'', so that negotiations could begin on implementing trade benefits offered to Tehran a year ago.

Although top US officials have repeatedly asserted their commitment to resolving the Iran matter through diplomacy, President George W Bush yesterday repeated that all options, including military action, were on the table.

ElBaradei said last week that war against Tehran over the nuclear issue would be ''an act of madness''.

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