Britain, France and Germany "have tried their best, but we expected more from our European colleagues," over a draft resolution that lists Iranian failures to report sensitive nuclear activities, Iranian ambassador Pirooz Hosseini told reporters at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The IAEA's 35-nation board of governors was Wednesday still debating at its Vienna headquarters the resolution on Iran, with a vote expected later in the week.

Hosseini said there was "too much pressure, unconstructive pressure, by the Americans" and accused them of "bullying."

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said the Islamic Republic could end cooperation with the IAEA unless it stopped being "influenced by the Americans".

But US ambassador to the IAEA Kenneth Brill told reporters the nuclear watchdog had identified "significant concerns" about Iran's program.

"We look forward to the agency getting complete cooperation from Iran so that it can truly get to the bottom of the Iranian nuclear program," Brill said.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran should keep on cooperating.

"Iran has been in breach of its (nuclear non-proliferation) obligations for many years and we need to build confidence," ElBaradei said.

The IAEA has been verifying since February 2003 whether Iran's nuclear program is peaceful, as Iran claims.

ElBaradei urged Iran not to renew its uranium enrichment activities, as Kharazi threatened Wednesday.

Iran's resumption of enriching uranium, a possible material for making nuclear weapons, would not be constructive, Brill said.

He said the United States, which claims Iran is secretely developing nuclear weapons, understood that an agreement Britain, France and Germany worked out last year with Iran was on "how to suspend and to build on the suspension of enrichment and not how to end the suspension of enrichment activities."

The United States, which wants to take Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, agreed on the compromise text Tuesday with Britain, France and Germany, which have stressed the need to get Iran to cooperate with the international community over nuclear non-proliferation.

The text, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, condemns Iran for failing to report such crucial technologies as advanced P-2 centrifuge designs for enriching uranium, possibly to weapons grade, despite having claimed to have fully disclosed its nuclear program in a declaration to the IAEA last October.

But the draft resolution puts off any immediate reaction, such as declaring Iran to be in non-compliance with the international nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a move that would mean the issue being taken up by the UN Security Council and pave the way towards possible sanctions.

The 13 non-aligned states on the IAEA board said they would be proposing amendments to the text on Thursday.

A NAM diplomat said they wanted to "soften the tone" to avoid condemning Iran.

Meanwhile, Libya took a further step towards cooperation with the IAEA, signing an additional protocol to the NPT which allows IAEA inspectors to carry out wider, unannounced inspections of its nuclear facilities.

This came after the IAEA board adopted a resolution to notify the UN Security Council that Tripoli had violated its nuclear non-proliferation commitments but had since cooperated in remedying this, so that sanctions would not be called for.

Brill said the Libyan resolution "sets a very good example for Iran and that is that a country that truly comes clean with the agency, truly cooperates pro-actively, gets a constructive response.

"Countries that seek to avoid providing the kind of active cooperation that Libya has will continue to be subjects of intensified efforts to promote cooperation and to further scrutiny," Brill said.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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