The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Vienna

As the UN atomic watchdog Friday wrapped up debate on Iran's disputed atomic drive, the focus turned to upcoming talks between the EU and Iran to find a way out of the long-running stand-off.

At its regular year-end board meeting, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) urged Iran to suspend uranium enrichment activities, a potential path to nuclear weapons, and called upon Tehran to open up its atomic programme to UN inspections. Western states expressed growing impatience with Iran's perceived foot-dragging on a whole range of outstanding issues during the two-day meeting in Vienna.

The issues included the IAEA's lack of credible explanations for traces of highly-enriched uranium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons, that inspectors found at research sites in Iran.

Even after four years of investigations, the agency still cannot say once and for all that Iran's nuclear drive is entirely peaceful, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said.

Given the unencouraging results thus far, the so-called EU-3 of Britain, France and Germany decided to join ElBaradei in setting a deadline by the end of the year, said French ambassador, Francois-Xavier Deniau.

"A wait-and-see approach is not an option," Deniau told fellow governors.

"We call upon Irant to reply to all outstanding questions in the next few weeks," he said.

The next key stage in the Iranian nuclear dossier will be a meeting between Iran's atomic negotiator Saeed Jalili and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in London next week.

Solana has been trying to persuade Tehran to resume talks on suspending uranium enrichment in exchange for a package of political and economic incentives, but Tehran has refused to offer concessions.

A report by Solana, due by the end of the month, will along with the IAEA's findings form the basis for a UN Security Council decision whether to slap more sanctions on the Islamic republic, following two previous sets of sanctions in December 2006 and March 2007.

The Europeans seem willing to dangle another carrot in front of Tehran.

At their last meeting on October 23, Solana proposed to Jalili a "double freeze", meaning that the United Nations would freeze extra sanctions if Iran agreed to freeze expansion of its enrichment programme.

That would then be followed by a "double suspension" of both sanctions and enrichment. It was apparently the first time that such a "diplomatic sequence" has been officially suggested.