VIENNA, May 19: The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency plans next week to urge the US administration to ease its push for tough UN Security Council action against Iran, diplomats said on Friday.

The diplomats said IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei would press Washington to moderate its stance during planned meetings with top US officials including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

The initiative by Mr ElBaradei, who has repeatedly called for negotiations instead of confrontation over Iran’s refusal to give up uranium enrichment, comes days before a meeting of the five permanent UN members plus Germany on the Iran issue.

With the Americans insisting that the Iran package include the threat of a Security Council resolution that is militarily enforceable if Tehran refuses to suspend enrichment, the meeting gives Mr ElBaradei a window to try and persuade Washington to back away from that stance.

While France and Britain back the Americans, Russia and China _ the two other permanent Security Council members _ oppose any resolution that even implicitly threatens the use of force in getting Iran to comply.

Restating Russia’s position, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday that negotiations with Iran without preconditions were the way to resolve the nuclear standoff, and reiterated his country was against sanctions or the use of force against Tehran.

“We are not putting forward any preliminary conditions,” Mr Lavrov said at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, where he was taking over the six-month rotating chairmanship of the 46-nation human rights watchdog. “We are convinced that the Iranian issue must be solved solely through direct negotiations.” While swinging behind new attempts by France, Britain and Germany to persuade the Iranians to give up enrichment _ which can be used to generate nuclear fuel or the core of weapons _ the Americans insist any rewards offered to Tehran must be accompanied by penalties if they do not comply. One of the diplomats said on Friday that Washington remained sceptical about the largest carrot being proposed by the Europeans _ a light-water research reactor that is less easy to misuse for nuclear proliferation than a heavy-water facility now under construction in Iran.

Concern has built since 2002, when Iran was found to be working on large-scale plans to enrich uranium. Iran insists it is only interested in power, but the international community increasingly fears ulterior motives.

While the IAEA has found no ‘smoking gun’ proving Iran wants nuclear arms, a series of IAEA reports since have revealed worrying clandestine activities _ such as plutonium processing _ and documents, including drawings of how to mould weapons-grade uranium metal into the shape of a warhead.

Inconsistencies in Iran’s enrichment activities deepened worries, and Iran’s decision to end a freeze of enrichment in February led the IAEA board to report Tehran to the Security Council for non-compliance.—AP