ElBaradei: Give Iran 'One Last Chance' Before Sanctions

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohammad ElBaradei is pressing members of the agency's board of governors to give Iran "one last chance" before sending Iran's case to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions, IAEA officials and European diplomats told Newsmax in Vienna.

The decision to refer Iran to the UN Security Council could come on Thanksgiving Day, when the IAEA Board of Governors has its next scheduled meeting to discuss "new information" discovered by inspectors in Iran, the officials said.

ElBaradei discussed a potential "face-saving" deal European negotiators could offer Tehran during meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in Washington on Tuesday, U.S. and IAEA officials said.

"Our message to Iran is that they have an opportunity to influence the timing and nature of the report to the UN Security Council," a State Department official said.

Portions of the offer, which the Europeans have not embraced, were leaked to the New York Times, which reported on Thursday that Iran would be allowed to continue to produce uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6), the feedstock used for uranium enrichment, as long as it exported the product to Russia where it would be enriched to produce reactor-grade fuel.

But a European official directly involved in the negotiations with Tehran denied that the Russia proposal was even on the table, and said the New York Times report was false.

"There is no offer," he told Newsmax in Vienna today. "Why should we make an offer? The Iranians must come to us" since they were the ones who had reneged on their promises to suspend all enrichment-related activities.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice also denied the New York Times report. "There is no U.S.-European proposal for the Iranians. I want to say that categorically," she said on Thursday.

An IAEA official present at the Washington, DC meetings where the idea was discussed found other inaccuracies in the New York Times account. "The idea is to allow Iran to make uranium tetrachloride (UF4) � not UF6 � and to keep it under strict IAEA monitoring," the official said. "A moratorium or a total ban on all fuel cycle activities is a non-starter, because of [Iranian] national pride."

The U.S. continues to push for a "renewed suspension" of all nuclear fuel processing and enrichment in Iran, a State Department official said. "This is the bar that has been set by the IAEA, and these are our instructions: Iran must renew suspension, renew cooperation with the IAEA, and resume negotiations with the EU3."

The IAEA believes Iran could agree to limit work at Isfahan to UF4 because trial production runs of UF6, which is made from UF4, have been "crap," a senior IAEA official said. "The quality is just no good. This will allow Iran to save face."