Diplomats Say IAEA Resolution on Iran Lacks Deadline

A resolution being hammered out at the U.N. nuclear watchdog on Iran sets Tehran no deadline for responding to the body's damning new report on its nuclear program, diplomats said Thursday.

Instead the International Atomic Energy Agency's board will call on the watchdog's head Yukiya Amano merely to brief the board on progress, a Western diplomat said, something the Japanese would most likely do anyway.

Israel's ambassador expressed disappointment, having hoped that last week's hard-hitting IAEA report on Iran's suspected nuclear weapons drive would produce a strong response from the agency's board of governors.

"It could be tougher," Israel's envoy Ehud Azoulay told Agence France Presse on the sidelines of the two-day Vienna meeting that began on Thursday, commenting on a draft that he had seen.

"But this is the magic of diplomacy. If you want to get everyone on board you have to sacrifice something. I hope it will lay the ground for future (U.N. Security Council) resolutions ... I really hope so," he said.

Diplomats were still haggling over the final wording, with no agreement from China as yet, the Western envoy said.

Amano said at the start of the meeting that he had written to Iran on November 2 proposing a "high-level" visit to Tehran.

"I hope a suitable date can be agreed soon," he said, adding that Iran was yet to respond.

Last week, the agency came the closest yet to accusing Iran outright of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, in a report immediately rejected by the Islamic republic as "baseless."

Based on a mass of information from different sources, the IAEA said it was able to build an overall "credible" impression that Tehran "carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device."

The evidence included a bus-sized steel container visible by satellite for explosives testing and weapons design work, including examining how to arm a Shahab-3 missile, capable of reaching Israel, with a nuclear warhead.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Wednesday Tehran would send "an analytical letter with logical and rational responses" to the report.

But the report laid bare deep differences within the so-called P5+1 bloc dealing with the Iran question, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France -- and Germany.

Washington, Paris and London jumped on it as justification to tighten the screws on Iran, already under four rounds of Security Council sanctions and additional U.S. and European Union restrictions.

But Beijing, which relies heavily on Iranian oil imports, and Moscow, which also has close commercial ties and built Iran's only nuclear power plant, have been far more cautious.

Both put pressure on Amano not to even publish the report, which Moscow said contained nothing new -- even comparing it to the false intelligence used to justify the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"The Russians and Chinese are in a bad mood, particularly because of what they perceive as a misuse of the last U.N. Security Council resolution on Libya," Oliver Thraenert of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs said.