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IAEA meets to mull action on Iran
The meeting of the 35-member board of governors of IAEA is seen as crucial, since no breakthrough has been made in the Iranian nuclear deadlock in the run-up to the meeting.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday he was hopeful a deal could be reached enabling the Iranian nuclear issue to be solved without the council's involvement.
"I am still very much hopeful that in the next week an agreement could be reached," ElBaradei told reporters after the opening of the board meeting, without elaborating.
It is believed he was referring to talks between Tehran and Moscow on moving Iran's enrichment programme to Russia in addition to increasing contacts between Iran and Europe.
Tehran has conducted two rounds of negotiations with Russia since the IAEA board meeting of Feb 4 decided to report Iran to the Security Council.
Iran, which had previously refused to discuss Moscow's proposal for the shifting of uranium enrichment to Russian soil, changed its position in mid-February.
The country also held talks with the European Union troika - Britain, France and Germany - here last Friday in a last-ditch effort prior to this week's meeting.
But the talks in both Moscow and Vienna failed to reach an agreement on uranium enrichment, a critical step in the nuclear fuel cycle.
Highly enriched uranium can be used for power generation and the making of atomic bombs.
Iran temporarily agreed in November 2003 to shelve nuclear fuel activities in exchange for political and trade incentives. But it resumed uranium conversion, a step before uranium enrichment, in August 2005.
Its resumption of uranium enrichment-related activities in January angered the EU trio, which suspended formal negotiations with Tehran.
Iran remained defiant on the eve of the IAEA board meeting.
"If the nuclear dossier is referred to the UN Security Council, Iran will have to resume (industrial-scale) uranium enrichment," the country's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told reporters in Tehran Sunday.
Iran started uranium enrichment experiments following the IAEA board resolution in February.
"Going to the Security Council will certainly not make Iran go back on research and development," said Larijani.
This week's IAEA board meeting might not come up with a new resolution, as the EU believed it might not receive enough backing from the board, according to diplomats in Vienna.
The IAEA board, which could begin to discuss the Iranian nuclear issue Tuesday or Wednesday, will be presented with a report by ElBaradei.
The report, which began to circulate among the IAEA board last week, said ambiguities on the scope and nature of Iran's nuclear programme had not been clarified after three years of investigations, partly due to insufficient information provided by Iran.
The report indicates that Iran seems to be accelerating uranium enrichment, saying Tehran plans to install 3,000 centrifuges in Natanz by the fourth quarter of the year.
Although the report stopped short of stating that Iran has engaged in nuclear weapons development, it said the agency could not draw a clear-cut conclusion that there were no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in the country.
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