VIENNA, Nov 25: The United States on Tuesday yielded to Europe’s big three — Britain, Germany and France — in a compromise UN draft resolution that condemns Iran’s nuclear programme but stops short of taking the issue to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, diplomats said.

“This is a resolution we can live with,” a Western diplomat said of the text for the UN nuclear watchdog that balances the US call to condemn Iran for almost two decades of nuclear activities with the European demand that Iran be rewarded for cooperating with the watchdog since last month.

After five days of intense discussions with US diplomats, the three main EU countries, known as the Euro 3, filed the draft with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the diplomats said.

The resolution is expected to be adopted by consensus by the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors when it meets on Wednesday, resuming a meeting broken off on Friday due to the stalemate.

Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, who had said that taking the issue to the UN Security Council could set off an international crisis, said his country was pleased with the draft resolution.

Iran is “looking for a peaceful resolution of the issue and I think we are on the right track”, he said.

The talks on how to deal with Iran, accused by the United States of trying secretly to develop nuclear weapons, had stalled as Washington took a hard line and Britain, France and Germany warned that antagonizing Tehran could prompt it to cut off cooperation with the IAEA, a Western diplomat said.

The IAEA board had begun its meeting on Thursday to consider how to respond to a report from its chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, that Tehran has violated nuclear safeguards for the past 18 years, including making small amounts of plutonium and enriched uranium.

But Mr ElBaradei said there was so far no evidence Iran was working on making nuclear weapons, an assertion Washington derided as “simply impossible to believe”.

The United States had dropped demands to take Iran immediately before the Security Council, which could impose sanctions, for “non-compliance” with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the diplomat said. But it had still wanted a guarantee that the Council be alerted if Iran’s violations continue.

The United States got this guarantee, considered a “trigger mechanism” in the draft, a Western diplomat said.

The clause said the “IAEA decides that should any further Iranian failures come to light, the Board of Governors would meet immediately to consider, in the light of the circumstances and of advice from the Director General, all options at its disposal, in accordance with the IAEA Statute and Iran’s Safeguards Agreement”, according to a full copy of the draft resolution.

“I think the language is clear enough,” a senior Western diplomat said.

Diplomats said the problem had been that a direct mention of the Council would infuriate Iran, which struck a deal with Britain, France and Germany on Oct 21 to cooperate with the IAEA.

In return, Iran was promised the issue would not go to the Security Council.

The Euro 3 diplomats had feared that Iran could go back on its promise to allow more intrusive inspections of its nuclear sites and as well on its current halt in uranium enrichment.—AFP/Reuters