"I suspect that this will be another of those reports where there is no 'smoking gun' which would allow the hardline countries to send this to the Security Council," a diplomat told AFP here.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is conducting a major probe into Iran's bid to generate electricity through nuclear power -- seen by the United States as a cover for secret weapons development.

The IAEA board is due to deliver the report on Iran's nuclear activities during a meeting at the organisation's headquarters from September 13 after the last of a group of IAEA inspectors returned from Iran last week.

However, the source said the report would not deliver "a so-called clean bill of health, which would allow Iran to say that they should be taken off the agenda of the board of governors" of the Vienna-based agency.

According to the source, neither will it contain conclusive findings about traces of highly enriched uranium discovered, which can be used to manufacture an atomic bomb, detected at facilities in Iran.

He said the IAEA had not yet concluded that the traces came from equipment bought on a black market network run by Pakistan's former nuclear chief scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, as reported by Jane's Defence Weekly this month.

"That source was not entirely correct -- some of the samples support the idea that some of the protocols came from Pakistan but (IAEA inspectors) don't have the complete set of analysis and samples and are not yet able to say what Jane's said."

The IAEA inspectors "are not going to say in the report that the contamination came from abroad," he said.

The traces of 54 percent-enriched uranium have been at the heart of an ongoing international dispute over whether Tehran has reneged on its obligations to inform the IAEA of all enrichment activities.

The Islamic republic, which insists that its nuclear program is peaceful in nature, says the traces were brought into the country on imported equipment and wants its dossier to be taken off the agenda of the UN nuclear watchdog.

A spokesman for the IAEA, Mark Gwozdecky, said that the body would be conducting more inspections of Iran on the spot in the future. "This round of inspections is finished, they will be more in the future.".

Iran has agreed to temporarily suspend uranium enrichment pending the completion of the IAEA probe, but is working on other parts of the fuel cycle and has recently resumed making centrifuges used for enrichment.

Tehran has asserted that it has a "legitimate right" to enrich uranium, which is permitted under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

But the concern is that once fully mastered, a country possessing such technology can easily divert it into military usage.

The European Union's "big three" -- Britain, France and Germany -- have been pressing Iran to cease working on the nuclear fuel cycle in exchange for increased trade and cooperation and the guaranteed supply of nuclear fuel.

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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