LONDON, Nov 15: The UK has insisted that it will pursue sanctions against Iran if forthcoming talks between Tehran and EU fail.

The country also said it would study Dr ElBaradei’s report on Iran’s nuclear programme carefully and offer detailed views at the forthcoming IAEA Board of Governors meeting (Nov 22-23).

A Foreign & Commonwealth Office spokesman in a statement on Thursday said that if Javier Solana’s talks with the Iranians did not show a positive outcome, and as the IAEA report now showed that Iran had still not addressed several issues about its nuclear programme, “we will pursue further Security Council and EU sanctions”.

If Iran wanted to restore trust in its programme, it must come clean on all outstanding issues without delay by the end of the November, as well as implement the Additional Protocol and suspend its enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, it said.

The IAEA report said Iran had provided it with information about its past nuclear activities as agreed under a work plan made in August.

But in a new report, the IAEA said it had not suspended uranium enrichment work as demanded by the UN Security Council and had 3,000 centrifuges.

Iran said the report showed it had been transparent – and further discussion at the UN Security Council was “illegal”.

The UN report will form the basis for deliberations when representatives of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, along with Germany, meet on Monday in Brussels.

On Tuesday, diplomats said Iran had given the IAEA a document containing design information that could be used for parts of a nuclear weapon. The IAEA had been asking Iran for the document since 2005.

The BBC, which claimed it has obtained a copy of the confidential report by IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, said Iran had made progress in responding to questions about its past nuclear activities.

“Iran has provided sufficient access to individuals and has responded in a timely manner to questions and provided clarifications and amplifications on issues raised in the context of the work plan,” the report said.

It also said the answers Iran had given about the history of its centrifuge programme, the machines used to enrich uranium, were consistent with the IAEA’s own findings.

However, the report said Iran’s co-operation with the IAEA had been “reactive” rather than “pro-active”.