Iran warned yesterday it would resume sensitive nuclear work within 24 hours if the EU failed to submit proposals aimed at ending a long-running crisis over its nuclear program.
The move has raised the stakes in the nuclear standoff and risks seeing Iran hauled before the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, a persistent demand of the US which accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons.
"If the Europeans submit their proposals by 5pm we will examine them, if not we will resume some of our [conversion] activities in Isfahan [today]," nuclear negotiator Ali Agha Mohammadi told reporters.
But he added: "Our position is that we want to pursue the negotiations with the Europeans."
Only on Saturday, Iran set a deadline of today for EU negotiators Britain, France and Germany to offer a package of trade, technology and security incentives in return for Iran guaranteeing its nuclear program is peaceful.
But London had denied there was a deadline. The Europeans had previously said they intended to submit the proposals after hardline new president Mahmood Ahmadinejad takes office on Wednesday.
"The negotiations continue, we will not resume enrichment, we are today waiting until 5pm for the European proposals," Mohammadi said.
"The only thing that we will resume, if the European proposals do not take into account the least of our demands, is part of the activities at Isfahan."
Conversion, a process carried out in Iran at a facility in the central city of Isfahan, changes uranium ore into the uranium gas that is the feedstock for enrichment.
Iran agreed in November to suspend uranium enrichment activities, a process that makes fuel for civilian nuclear power plants but can also be the explosive core of atom bombs, during negotiations with the Europeans.
But Tehran says it has the right to enrichment under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the issue has been one of the chief stumbling blocks in the process with the Europeans.
And outgoing reformist President Mohammad Khatami said last week that Iran would resume enrichment activities no matter what the Europeans propose although "we prefer to do it with their agreement."
Washington accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, a charge vehemently denied by the Islamic republic, and the negotiation process with the EU is aimed at avoiding Tehran being brought before the Security Council.
But the EU is "warning about the consequences of breaking the suspension and that this will lead to the matter being taken to the UN Security Council," one diplomat told reporters in Vienna, the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Iran would inform the UN nuclear watchdog yesterday or today of the resumption of some conversion work.
"The time limit [on the suspension of such activities] has passed and public opinion cannot wait any longer," Asefi said.
He said international inspectors currently in Iran would be taken to the Isfahan facility where the IAEA seals would be "removed in the presence of the inspectors and the work will resume."
On Saturday, Mohammadi had said that a deadline of Aug. 1 had been fixed at a previous meeting in London and if the Europeans did not stick to this then Iran would take "measures in line with its national interest."
However a spokesman for the British Foreign Office denied that there was ever a deadline.
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