Tehran was also asked to comply with NPT safeguards against the possible spread of nuclear weapons.

Iran objected strongly to being named in the summary and the closing session was delayed for several hours as Japanese chairman Yukiya Amano held closed-door consultations to avoid a collapse in the proceedings, diplomats said.

The summary was finally demoted to a "working paper", rather than the official rendering of the proceedings, after non-aligned states also objected to it.

But this was a compromise as Iran had wanted the summary banished entirely.

British ambassador John Duncan told AFP the Iranians should have "no illusions that this (conference) was a tremendous blow for them."

For the first time, "they were isolated in an international forum," Duncan said.

Western diplomats said the summary still stood as the record of the conference, the first of several meetings to prepare for a formal review in 2010 of the NPT, the world's basic agreement for the fight against nuclear weapons.

Many complain the 1970 pact is flawed since it allows states to develop technology that has military as well as peaceful uses.

US representative Christopher Ford told reporters it was "gratifying" that the Iranians "have seen fit to back down in the face of a united international community and that's a step that speaks well for the integrity of the NPT."

But Iranian ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh said the demoting of the summary was a victory for Tehran. He said the text was less significant since it was now only a presentation of the chairman's point of view.

The conference had turned into a face-off between Washington, which accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, and the Islamic Republic, which says it has a peaceful programme to generate atomic power.

Iran had held up the beginning of the meeting for the first six days as it objected but finally yielded to an agenda item calling for full compliance with the NPT.

But Iran did win an explanatory note that compliance should be with "all the provisions" of the treaty and Soltanieh said the Americans had received a "strong message" that they had to honor their pledges on disarmament.

"The message of this conference to be reflected to the whole world is serious concern about the lack of progress and non-compliance by nuclear weapons states paricultarly the United States and the United Kingdom," with NPT articles calling for moves toward disarmament, Soltanieh said.

Non-aligned states were also opposed to the chairman's statement becoming the official record as they felt the document failed to reflect their concerns, but they did not back Iran's desire to have the summary dropped entirely, diplomats said.

"We don't believe it was a factual document," Cuban ambassador Norma Goicochea Estenov told reporters.

One problem was the statement's calling the Additional Protocol to the NPT, which gives the IAEA authority for wider inspections, "an essential and indispensable tool for effective functioning of the IAEA safeguards agreement."

A non-aligned diplomat said Egypt objected to this, since it wants any call for universal application of this protocol to include Israel, which has not signed the NPT.

The nine-page summary also noted "grave concern" over North Korea's nuclear programme and its announcement of a nuclear test in October last year.

US, Iran to hold breakthrough meeting on Iraq
Washington (AFP) May 13 - The United States and Iran plan to hold landmark talks to thrash out security in war-torn Iraq, but will steer clear of the Islamic republic's nuclear ambitions, officials said Sunday. The talks "in the next few weeks" are likely to involve Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, and an Iranian delegation, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

President George W. Bush had authorized the dialogue "because we must take every step possible to stabilize Iraq and reduce the risk to our troops, even as our military continue to act against hostile Iranian-backed activity in Iraq," Johndroe said.

The engagement between the two arch-foes should "not be seen as a particular moment but as part of an ongoing process to get Iran to play a constructive role in Iraq," Johndroe added.

Washington said the talks will not go into Western suspicions that Iran is covertly trying to build nuclear weapons, as the US government and its European allies mount pressure on Tehran to renounce uranium enrichment.

"There are other places for a discussion on the nuclear issue, and we've been clear what needs to take place for that," State Department spokeswoman Leslie Phillips said.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Sunday Tehran had agreed to a US request for the talks on Iraq, not long after the nations failed to have substantive contacts at a conference in Egypt.

"Iran has agreed to talk to the US side over Iraq, in Iraq, in order to relieve the pain of the Iraqi people, to support the government and to reinforce security in Iraq," he said, according to the state-run IRNA agency.

Details include a date for the talks would be made public this week, he said. Iran's Mehr news agency said they would take place in Baghdad.

With the Democrats back in control of Congress, the Bush administration has been under pressure to revive engagement with Iran as part of a far-reaching policy overhaul to allow US troops to start leaving neighboring Iraq.

The Iraq Study Group, a 10-member panel of Washington grandees co-chaired by former secretary of state James Baker, said in a December report that the administration should engage both Iran and Syria "constructively."

But in a sign that almost three decades of enmity between the United States and Iran remains intact, Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday issued a stark warning from the deck of a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf.

"We'll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region," he said aboard the USS John C. Stennis as it cruised roughly 240 kilometers (150 miles) from Iran.

Just over a week ago, hopes were dashed that Iran and the United States would hold substantive contacts at the conference on Iraq's security in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

At that meeting, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki barely exchanged pleasantries with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice while a lower-level encounter on May 4 between high-ranking diplomats lasted just minutes.

US-Iranian relations have been frozen since 1980, after radical students stormed the US embassy in Tehran in the wake of the country's Islamic revolution and held 52 diplomats hostage for 444 days.

Washington today accuses Iran of aiding Shiite militia groups and attacking US soldiers in Iraq, charges vehemently denied by Tehran. Tensions have intensified over the arrest by the United States of seven Iranians inside Iraq.

But after the Sharm el-Sheikh conference, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari predicted that Iran and the United States would have to acknowledge each other's importance in his shattered country.

Senator Chuck Hagel, one of the leading Republican dissidents against Bush's Iraq policy, said Sunday that "Iran has to be part" of any regional deal on Iraq.

"Iran is not going to do us any favors, but it's in their interest to find some common denominators here," he said Sunday on the CBS network.

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