VIENNA, Feb 20 2007 - Iran's nuclear negotiator was to meet Tuesday with the head of the UN atomic watchdog ahead of a crucial report on the Iranian programme that could set the stage for increased UN sanctions,
The meeting in Vienna of the Iranian Ali Larijani and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei comes ahead of the expiry on Friday of a UN Security Council deadline for Iran to halt sensitive uranium enrichment work.
The Council set the deadline in December in a resolution that levied sanctions on Iran.
ElBaradei is to report by Friday on whether Iran has stopped enrichment, and this finding will be reviewed at an IAEA board of governors meeting on March 6.
Iranian defiance could lead to tougher sanctions.
ElBaradei said in an interview in London's Financial Times published Tuesday that his meeting with Larijani would be "a last-ditch effort to try to convince them (the Iranians) that it is in their interest to find a way to go into negotiations."
Enrichment makes fuel for civilian reactors but can also produce atom bomb material, and in Tehran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran would not halt the sensitive nuclear fuel work as a precondition to talks.
"We are in favour of dialogue. But in order for us to talk they are imposing a condition that would deprive us of our right," Ahmadinejad said in a public rally in Gilan province, referring to the West.
"If they say that our nuclear production plant and its fuel cycle should be shut down, this is fine. But justice necessitates that those who want to negotiate should halt their own nuclear fuel cycles!" he said.
ElBaradei has proposed a "timeout" in the nuclear standoff that would see Iran suspending enrichment and the UN simultaneously suspending its sanctions, the Iranian news agency IRNA said.
The United States leads the West in charging that Iran seeks nuclear weapons.
Iran says its atomic programme is only to produce electricity.
Larijani has over the past 10 days proposed that Iran spin empty the centrifuges that enrich uranium, rather than load them with the feedstock gas for refining uranium, or enrich to low levels adequate for fuel needs but not enough for weapons use, diplomats said.
The United States rejects such compromises, saying they would still give Iran experience in enrichment that could be used to make weapons, the diplomats said.
A senior European diplomat told AFP that Larijani was not expected to offer anything new in Vienna and that eventual concessions would stop short of unilaterally suspending enrichment as the Security Council demands.
"Just before reports are published, the Iranians look into a way to split the anti-Iran alliance but I don't see this happening," the diplomat said.
A Middle Eastern diplomat said Larijani wanted to signal "that Iran attaches importance to the IAEA and to ElBaradei playing a role as a mediator."
"The Iranians know ElBaradei's report in general is negative because they have not stopped enrichment, and want something in the report to say that Larijani made a last-minute visit here," the diplomat said.
ElBaradei told the Financial Times that Iran may be able to enrich uranium on a mass scale in just six months, although it could still be 10 years away from the capacity to build a nuclear bomb.
Iran has moved feedstock gas needed to start uranium enrichment into a nuclear plant designed for industrial-level enrichment, diplomats told AFP Monday.
Iran moved the uranium gas (uranium hexafluoride, UF6) early this month from a conversion facility at Isfahan into the underground Natanz plant in central Iran where it last month started installing centrifuge machines, the diplomats said.
While Iran has not started running the centrifuges, bringing the uranium gas into the plant was "provocative" act as this is "not the act of a country that seeks compromise,", non-proliferation analyst Mark Fitzpatrick said from the London IISS think tank.
