UNITED NATIONS, May 2: Germany warned on Monday that Iran’s threat to defy the West and resume uranium enrichment activities which could be used to make nuclear weapons would torpedo talks between the European Union and Tehran. In one of the strongest warnings yet over Iran’s disputed nuclear programme, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said such a move would “collapse” the talks but stressed that negotiations with Iran were for now continuing.

“It is the foundation of the talks that the uranium enrichment remains suspended,” Mr Fischer told reporters on the sidelines of an international conference to review the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). If Tehran re-starts enrichment, he said, “this would lead to a collapse of the talks”.

Iran has insisted that its nuclear programme is intended for peaceful, civilian energy purposes and stopped enriching uranium as a confidence-building measure for negotiations with the European Union that were launched in December. But Tehran, which US President George Bush lumped into his famed “axis of evil” and which Washington says could be chasing the atomic bomb, is awaiting a response on a proposal it has made to resume limited production of enriched uranium, which makes fuel for nuclear power reactors, but what can also be the explosive core of atom bombs.

Iranian representatives said after talks with EU negotiators Britain, France and Germany in London on Friday that they were tiring of waiting for a European yes or no, and might go ahead with key enrichment-related activities anyway. The issue is one of several key questions, along with North Korea’s nuclear programme, that will be hotly debated during the month-long NPT conference taking place at the United Nations in New York.

On Friday, Iranian negotiator Cyrus Nasseri, quoted by Iran’s official news agency, said Tehran “will perhaps be forced” to resume part of its enrichment “in the absence of an agreement” with the European Union.

The European trio is insisting however that Iran must give up all nuclear fuel activity to provide “objective guarantees” it will not seek to make atomic weapons.

The United States, which backs the EU diplomatic initiative but is not party to the talks, charges that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons and must be prevented from obtaining the weapons capability which enrichment represents.

Washington has threatened to drag Iran before the UN Security Council for possible international sanctions if it resumes any enrichment activities.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, on Monday said that Iran should refrain from unilaterally resuming any enrichment activities.

“I hope that both parties will continue to talk,” he told reporters.

Mr Nasseri said before the London meeting: “Our point is we simply do not have much time. We have a fuel program and we can’t hold it much further.” —AFP