Britain, France and Germany turned up the pressure on Iran, giving Tehran a November deadline to allay concern it is secretly making atomic weapons.

In Brussels, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer warned Iran it faces "serious" consequences unless it fulfills a pledge to stop uranium enrichment, which produces fuel for civilian reactors but also the explosive core for atomic bombs.

His French counterpart Michel Barnier confirmed that Britain, France and Germany -- who have spearheaded Europe's diplomatic offensive over Iran -- were circulating a draft resolution at the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which opened a meeting in Vienna Monday.

The draft was still being negotiated in Vienna, diplomats said however, and was not ready to submit to the IAEA board of governors, which would decide on eventual action, with the United States pushing for a harder line against Iran.

Barnier did not rule out that the IAEA would bring Iran before the UN Security Council if Tehran refused to cooperate, as the United States has been urging, but expressed hope that a political solution was possible.

"Our three countries are today proposing a draft resolution in Vienna which calls on the IAEA director general to make an objective and impartial assessment of Iran's nuclear program by November to clarify matters," he said.

"At that time we will have various choices before us: either our concerns remain and we will have the option of sending the case to the UN Security Council. Or -- and it is what we hope, what I hope -- Iran will show it can be trusted and the affair can be defused in Vienna," he said.

The United States says Iran is secretly developing nuclear arms, in defiance of the international community, and should be taken before the UN Security Council for punishing sanctions. Diplomats said it wants a "trigger mechanism" in the resolution that would make this automatic if Iran failed to cooperate.

In Vienna, a senior Iranian official told AFP that Iran is ready to resume enriching uranium within a few months although no decision has been reached in Tehran, in the clearest sign yet that Iran will end the year-old enrichment suspension that was to still worries about its nuclear ambitions.

"Iran should be able to start enrichment activities within a few months but high-level decision makers still have not yet decided about the timing," Hossein Mousavian, head of the Islamic republic's delegation to the IAEA meeting, said.

Mousavian said that Iran has reached self-sufficiency in centrifuge technology, the key to enriching uranium.

Centrifuges are used to spin a uranium gas in order to refine highly enriched uranium.

"Yes we are self-sufficient in centrifuges," Mousavian said.

Mousavian said a year-long suspension of uranium enrichment coupled with Iran's signing an additional protocol to allow wider IAEA inspections and giving IAEA inspectors "full access" to Iranian facilities was "enough for confidence-building."

"This can not continue for a very long time," he said about the suspension, adding that this was especially true since Iran is allowed to enrich uranium under the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

He said Iran was disappointed that Britain, France and Germany, with whom it signed the October agreement for suspension and increased Iranian cooperation with the IAEA, had not lived up to their promises to have the IAEA's investigation of Iran wrapped up by last June and to provide transfers of peaceful nuclear technology in exchange for Iran's cooperation.

But Mousavian said Iran was now negotiating with the European Union on "a wide-range of issues related to security, peace and stability in the whole region of the Persian Gulf, Caucasus, Central Asia and Middle East" and that progress in these talks "would have an effect on the timing of starting enrichment."

Iran seeks the elimination of weapons of mass destruction from the Middle East as well as trade and technology transfers, Mousavian said.