By Mark Heinrich
VIENNA (Reuters) - Western powers and Iran seem to be lurching towards conflict over Tehran's pursuit of atomic power with bomb potential, having dismissed a call by the head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog for a "timeout".
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei says the two sides should avert a spiral towards war with a pause under which Iran's uranium enrichment project and U.N. sanctions would be suspended simultaneously to rekindle negotiations.
"Both Iran and the U.S. are playing a nuclear game of chicken, barrelling toward one another. ElBaradei has made a desperate plea for cooler heads to wrestle away the wheel," said Joe Cirincione, chief nuclear security analyst at the Centre for American Progress think-tank in Washington.
The United States and European allies have dismissed the proposal as well-meaning but superfluous. The Dec. 23 U.N. Security Council resolution that imposed sanctions requires Iran to stop enriching first to have them suspended, they stressed.
"That is very clear and not subject to reinterpretation," said Alejandro Wolff, acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, alluding to ElBaradei's idea, which was floated at the high-profile World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week.
France said the notion of mutual suspensions already lay in the Council resolution. A European official said there was concern ElBaradei might have muddied the waters by presenting as a fresh initiative what really amounted to the Council position.
Iran asked for time to assess whether a "timeout" was viable -- the sort of equivocal answer it has given to stall previous offers of trade incentives to shelve enrichment, diplomats say.
Western powers suspect Iran, the world's No. 4 oil exporter, of trying to build atomic bombs behind the facade of a nuclear fuel programme it insists is only for generating electricity.
Tehran now says -- and IAEA inspectors confirm -- that it is poised to ramp up enrichment from an experimental stage -- some 330 centrifuges -- to "industrial scale" by rigging up 3,000 in a vast hall at its flagship Natanz nuclear plant.
Iran may triumphantly announce the start to installation when marking the anniversary of its Islamic Revolution in early February -- thumbing its nose at a Security Council deadline of Feb. 21 for Tehran to stop enriching or face wider sanctions.
If run in unison nonstop for long periods, 3,000 could enrich enough uranium for at least one warhead within a year.
"POINT OF NO RETURN"
The United States and Israel have voiced concern that 3,000 centrifuges will bring Iran to the nuclear "point of no return".
Fears of a pre-emptive U.S. strike on Iran have risen on President George W. Bush's dispatch of an extra aircraft carrier strike group to the Gulf and his new focus on Iranian-backed Shi'ite "extremists" he says seek to dominate the Middle East.
"It's hard to see how a timeout will work, given the lack of trust and Bush heading in the other direction, perceiving Iran is moving rapidly to weapons capability," said David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security.
While firm on Iran's obligation to suspend enrichment to defuse mistrust, EU powers strongly oppose a war option, and even a broader trade credit ban sought by Washington, for fear both of damage to European economies and a disastrous wider conflagration in the region endangering all Western interests.
"Everyone (except U.S. hawks) is concerned that the lack of negotiation, the U.S. (force) surge in Iraq and the policy of basically targeting Iranians in Iraq give us all the ingredients of a hell of a war in the near future," said Trita Parsi, a U.S.-based Iranian political analyst and author.
In urging calm, ElBaradei fears war would drive Iran out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, undermining it globally.
"There is time to reflect," he argued, citing estimates that Iran remains 3-8 years away from bomb "breakout" capacity, given its quality-control problems in operating a few hundred interlinked centrifuges in tandem, let alone thousands.
But a timeout would have to be defined via talks, rendered all but improbable by post-sanctions provocations, analysts say.
Tehran has derided the U.N. embargo on nuclear materials it already possesses, for the most part, while Washington is campaigning to corner Tehran by having EU partners join it in throttling foreign investment in the Islamic Republic.
"There is still time for diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Even if Iran begins installing centrifuges in the underground facility, it won't have 3,000 up and running for a year or more at the earliest," said Mark Fitzpatrick, non-proliferation scholar at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
