Britain, France and Germany are "not against the US idea but they want any threat to be implicit. They don't want to tie their hands and be forced into a specific action," a non-American Western diplomat told AFP.

In Iran, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani vowed Wednesday the Islamic republic would resist international efforts to prevent it from mastering advanced nuclear technology.

"The Europeans and the Americans say with determination that Iran must not master nuclear technology and we respond with determination . . . that we will not renounce our legitimate right," he was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA.

He was criticising a draft resolution put before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by the Europeans that calls on Iran to ease suspicions over its nuclear drive by November and suspend fuel cycle activities.

"The United States and Europe say the same things, and there will be a lot of problems in the future," he said.

The United States is pushing for a tough resolution that sets a deadline, possibly as early as October 31, for Tehran to fully suspend uranium enrichment, according to a copy of the text obtained by AFP.

"We want the resolution to lay out essential and urgent steps for Iran to take," a US official said.

He said the United States saw the deadline as a "trigger," so that if Iran failed to do what was asked, the IAEA would automatically at its next meeting in November take Tehran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.

Britain, France and Germany, however, stress constructive engagement, rather than confrontation, with Iran.

Their resolution gives Iran a November deadline to allay concern that it is secretly making atomic weapons but does not say that Iran should automatically be taken to the Security Council if it fails to do this.

Non-aligned states were firmly in support of the European position.

Malaysia's IAEA ambassador Hussein Haniff said they "do not want to see a trigger mechanism becuase that is pre-emptive."

He said the IAEA should work from reports by its director general Mohamed ElBaradei and "there is nothing in the report that calls for Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council."

Meanwhile, Iran appeared to be hardening its stance, saying it would not agree to an unlimited suspension of uranium enrichment, a process that makes what can be fuel for civilian reactors or the explosive core of atomic bombs.

Hossein Mousavian, the head of the Iranian delegation to the IAEA meeting, warned Tuesday that "we will not accept any bargaining for an unlimited suspension."

"Iran will not accept having to make new commitments that extend the scope of the suspension of uranium enrichment," he said.

Tehran insists its program is strictly for civilian purposes and within the confines of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The United States however maintains that Iran has not lived up to an agreement a year ago to suspend the building of centrifuges used for enriching uranium and is in fact conducting a covert program to produce nuclear weapons.

The meeting in Vienna of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Tuesday adjourned its plenary session until further notice in order to allow for informal talks.

IAEA officials said that a resolution might be brought before the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors on Friday, but this was not certain.