LONDON, Oct 9: A top US official predicted on Thursday that Iran would show some cooperation to prevent a showdown over an Oct 31 deadline, but not enough to dispel international suspicion of its nuclear ambitions.

In a tough resolution last month, the UN nuclear watchdog gave Iran until the end of the month to answer doubts about its atomic ambitions, demanding rigorous inspections of suspect sites. Washington is urging strong UN measures against Tehran, which it suspects of secretly developing nuclear weapons.

“I think what will happen prior to Oct 31 is the Iranians will cooperate a little bit and the issue will be, ‘Did they cooperate enough?’” US Undersecretary of State John Bolton told reporters in London.

“They will try and throw sand in our eyes and use a modest level of cooperation to hide some level of obfuscation and lack of cooperation, to conceal as much as they can, to delay, to fight for time, and to avoid having the issue referred to the Security Council,” he added.

Asked why Washington did not take a tough line on Israel’s nuclear programme, Mr Bolton said: “The issue for the US is what poses a threat to us and to our allies...We are not Platonic guardians, we are representing American interests.”

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami insisted on Wednesday Tehran would provide whatever cooperation was needed by the deadline set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to prove its nuclear programme is solely geared for peaceful purposes.

Mr Bolton, considered a hawk within the administration of US President George Bush, said that if unchecked, Iran may have nuclear arms “towards the end of the decade”, though he noted “some people have theories that put the Iranians much closer”.

“The risk of outward Iranian proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to other countries in the region is also a risk we take very seriously,” he added.

Mr Bolton, who was recently called “human scum” by North Korea for describing its leader, Kim Jong-il, as a dictator, suggested that President Bush’s so-called “axis of evil” - Iraq under Saddam, Iran and North Korea — should be widened to include other “rogue, loser states”.

“I think there are other candidate members for the axis of evil...Libya, Syria and Cuba and a variety of places.”

Mr Bolton was in London for talks on a US plan to intercept ships and planes that may be trafficking weapons of mass destruction. The Proliferation Security Initiative has won support from 10 other nations, helping ease diplomatic tensions over the US-British invasion of Iraq and the subsequent failure to find weapons of mass destruction there.

Mr Bolton said former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein may well have got rid of his weapons. “They may have been moved out of Iraq years ago — it’s possible,” he said.

Saddam Hussein may also have ordered them destroyed, he added, “in which case it was a bad mistake not to keep records”.

But he said Iraq had about 1,000 nuclear scientists, whom he said Saddam had dubbed as his “nuclear Mujahideen”, which demonstrated Baghdad’s dangerous intentions.—Reuters