Diplomats Give Deadline To Iran

Diplomats say Tehran faces a deadline next month to stop uranium conversion at a plant in central Iran.

The diplomats say insufficient progress by Sept. 3 could lead to a report to the United Nations. The U.N. Security Council has the power to impose sanctions on Iran.

The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be quoted.

The nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board of directors already has adopted a resolution saying there are unresolved issues involving Iran's nuclear program. But it did not speak of reporting the matter to the Security Council.

The resolution expressed "serious concern" over the regime's resumption of uranium conversion at its nuclear facility at Isfahan, saying the move "underlines the importance of rectifying the situation ... and of allowing for the possibility of further discussions in relation to that situation."

President Bush said Thursday that the new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will receive a U.S. visa to attend an annual United Nations gathering in New York City next month, and said he welcomes action by the IAEA to warn Iran about consequences of its nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Bush, who met at his Texas ranch with members of his foreign policy team, said U.S. investigators have not yet determined what role Ahmadinejad may have played in the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Even so, Mr. Bush said, the United States has obligations as the host country of the United Nations, which is headquartered in New York.

Iran has said it prefers sanctions over capitulation.

Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and geared only toward producing electricity. The United States and others contend it is covertly trying to build atomic weapons - concerns fueled by past revelations that Iran concealed 18 years of nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment.

The resolution, however, noted that in 2004 the IAEA found that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran had been accounted for, and that such material had not been diverted to prohibited activities."

While the resolution diffuses the standoff with Iran, CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk says all of the United States' concerns aren't appeased.

"The IAEA solution does not resolve Washington's fears about Iran's motives," said Falk, "and the downside is that the IAEA is back to 'square one' six months from now. But the upside is that the compromise keeps Iran from walking away from the non-proliferation treaty, as North Korea has done, and allows Iran to reverse course on its threats of confrontation."

The board asked IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei to provide it with a comprehensive report on Iran's compliance with an agency safeguards agreement by Sept. 3.

Gregory Schulte, the U.S. envoy to the IAEA, told reporters that the adoption of the resolution "shows that the international community is united in its determination that Iran move off the dangerous course that it is on."

Mohammad Saeedi, an Iranian negotiator in Vienna, said earlier that Tehran rejected the text because it would bar Iran from converting uranium, a process it is allowed to pursue under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Enriched uranium can be used to produce energy or to make weapons, depending on the degree to which it has been enriched.

ElBaradei has warned against a proliferation of enrichment processes, saying that "brings us very close to the capability to develop nuclear weapons."

Negotiations on how to rebuke Iran started Tuesday when the board met for an emergency session.

Although the IAEA board had the power to report Tehran to the Security Council, diplomats had made clear they were not considering that step — widely seen as a last resort — and instead were holding out hope for a negotiated end to the standoff.

On Wednesday, agency inspectors watched as Iranian workers removed IAEA seals at the plant in Isfahan. Workers were set to resume the final steps of conversion, a process that precedes enrichment. Some conversion activities were resumed Monday.

In the past, the IAEA board has said the suspension was a voluntary but necessary confidence-building measure to alleviate concerns about Iran's nuclear program.

"This should (in) no way be seen as an endorsement," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said of the removal of the seals.

A surveillance system allowing the agency to keep track of nuclear material at the plant had been installed, she said.

Matthew Boland, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the IAEA, called the breaking of the seals "yet another sign of Iran's disregard for international concerns."

"We strongly support (Germany's, Britain's and France's) efforts to convince Iran to stop its dangerous activities," he said.

The European Union said in a statement it does "not believe that Iran has any operational need to engage in fissile material production activities ... if the intentions of its nuclear program are exclusively peaceful."

But Iran's chief IAEA delegate, Sirus Nasseri, argued earlier that all countries should be permitted to produce their own nuclear power plant fuel to prevent being "dependent on an exclusive cartel of nuclear fuel suppliers — a cartel that has a manifest record of denials and restrictions for political and commercial reasons."

On Saturday, Tehran rejected the latest EU offer of economic and political incentives, but has said it still wanted to continue with the talks, expected to continue later this month.