TEHRAN: Britain, France and Germany have made an unsuccessful attempt to encourage Iran to comply with the International Atomic Energy Agency rules and curb its nuclear ambitions by offering to share their nuclear technology.

The incentive was intended to persuade Iran to accept tougher nuclear inspections and to halt its uranium enrichment programme.

It was offered despite strong objections by the US, according to a Reuters news agency report on Friday.

Iran’s lukewarm reaction served to unite the US and European governments behind the IAEA’s tough resolution last week, which requires Iran to prove that it has no-nuclear weapons programme by October 31.

If it fails to do so it make face action by the UN security council action. The reported behind-the -scenes offer sheds new light on the crisis caused by Iran’s nuclear activities.

Tehran’s attempt to buy time on the issue has backfired and appears to have paved the way for transatlantic unity.

The Bush administration wants Iran isolated and dismisses Europe’s attempts at “constructive engagement” with reformers in the theocratic leadership.

Iran’s decision to reject the offer will make it more difficult for the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and other foreign ministers to defend the benefits of engagement.

Iranian officials told journalists privately in August that England, France and Germany were putting pressure on their government to accept short-notice inspections of Iran’s nuclear plants.

But they but did not mention the incentives that were also proposed. A letter from the three powers said that if Iran agreed to the demands they would offer cooperation on technology. It did not specify what sort of technology,.

But Iran has made it clear that civilian nuclear technology is the only incentive it is interested in.

“Washington did not consider it very helpful at all,” a diplomat familiar with the matter said.

The administration was worried that it might divide Europe and the US, talked to “friends and colleagues in Europe” and “attempted to dissuade them from sending the letter,” the diplomat told Reuters.

A source said that the joint British, French and German initiative “still stands”.

Iran has given conflicting signals about how it will react to the IAEA resolution, but has said it will continue to cooperate with the agency.

But Conservative figures advocate following the North Korean example by withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty altogether and ejecting UN inspectors.

“What is wrong with considering this treaty on nuclear energy and pulling out of it?” Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who heads the supervisory body the Guardian Council, said yesterday at Friday prayers in Tehran.

“North Korea pulled out of it and many countries have never entered it.”

While the reformist government, led by President Mohammad Khatami, has said it will consider signing the additional protocol to the treaty which would allow short-notice inspections, Ayatollah Jannati said that would be represent “an extraordinary humiliation”.

The final decisions on Iran’s nuclear programme are believed to rest with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and allied senior clerics, not with Mr Khatami’s cabinet, whose powers have been systematically curtailed.

The US and European governments suspect that Iran has a clandestine nuclear weapons programme and point to its efforts to enrich uranium, build a heavy water plant, and secure spent nuclear fuel, and to its contradictory accounts of its activities.

Iran says its nuclear programme is designed for peaceful purposes, to meet growing demand for electricity.

As for the IAEA tests which showed enriched uranium at a nuclear site, Iranian officials say the samples came from contaminated components bought on the black market abroad.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.