Western states have said they did not expect a quick response to the UN nuclear chief's call for a "timeout" in the Iranian nuclear crisis, with the sticking point still Iran's insistence on enriching uranium.
But Iranian ally and trading partner Russia was upbeat. Its national security chief Igor Ivanov said in Tehran Sunday that the proposed pause could lead "to a political solution of the crisis".
Mohamad ElBaradei, director general of the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called Friday for a "timeout" in the showdown over Iran's nuclear ambitions, with the UN suspending sanctions and Tehran halting uranium enrichment at the same time.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, ElBaradei proposed a face-saving solution in which the two steps would take place simultaneously instead of in sequence.
But US, British and German officials all harked back, in comments to AFP, to the UN Security Council resolution passed on December 23. It mandates that Iran suspend uranium enrichment, which makes fuel for civilian nuclear reactors but also atom bomb material, as a precondition to any steps forward.
A spokesman at Britain's Foreign Office said the Security Council "was clear and requested Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment and related processing activities. The resolution has been passed and we are still waiting for Iran to comply with it".
US ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna, Gregory Schulte, said: "If Iran verifiably suspends all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, then the Security Council will suspend sanctions."
"Suspension of these activities would help give the world confidence that Iran's leaders are not seeking the know-how to make highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons," Schulte said.
This would lead to talks by world powers with Iran on helping it develop its nuclear programme in return for guarantees it does not seek nuclear weapons.
But Iran has made clear it is planning to increase its enrichment capacity by installing 3,000 centrifuges, the machines which enrich uranium, at an underground facility in Natanz, where it is already running two pilot cascades of 164 centrifuges each at a pilot site above-ground.
Iran's national security chief and top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said over the weekend that ElBaradei's proposal needed further examination.
A senior European diplomat in Vienna said, however, "what's happening at the moment with Iran's rejection of 38 IAEA inspectors is not a good sign."
The diplomat said that Iran's rejection of inspectors from countries which backed the Security Council resolution is "in a way undermining the neutrality and objectivity of the agency and in that sense is very deplorable."
Non-proliferation analyst Mark Fitzpatrick, from the London think tank the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said the key to ElBaradei's approach "would be that the West would have to take Iran's word that it had stopped the enrichment activity."
The problem, however, is that "in the past every time a deal to stop enrichment was made, it was not completed and was only temporary, so the West does not have much confidence that there will be a real suspension unless it is verified."
Meanwhile, diplomats in Vienna said it was also not clear to what sort of suspension ElBaradei was referring.
ElBaradei seems to have left open whether Iran would suspend all enrichment-related activities, as the United States insists and as the UN resolution states, or whether it could still spin centrifuges empty of the uranium gas used to make enriched uranium.
"It is not for ElBaradei to give the details," one diplomat said.
"ElBaradei is trying to find a middle ground since both sides have backed themselves into respective corners," the diplomat said.
"The feeler that ElBaradei has put out would have to be negotiated," the diplomat said.
