UN watchdog set to send Iran to Security Council

VIENNA, Thursday (Reuters) - An international standoff over Iran's nuclear aims reaches a crossroads when U.N. atomic overseers meet to consider reporting Tehran to the U.N. Security Council amid Iranian threats to hit back if they do so.

A battle for votes among the 35 nations on the board of the U.N. nuclear watchdog (IAEA) went down to the wire as Iran's envoy said involving the Council would be "a historical mistake" and his U.S. counterpart said only "referral will get Iran off its dangerous path".

Diplomats said a resolution tabled by permanent Council powers Britain and France along with Germany, with U.S. support, asking the IAEA to engage the Council would pass by a solid majority after the EU enlisted Russia and China for the move.

But the rare show of unity among the five permanent Council members emerged only after the EU agreed not to consider action against Iran, such as sanctions, until after the IAEA's chief submits a conclusive report to a regular March 6 board meeting.

The compromise was struck to win over board members, mainly a large bloc of developing nations, who like Moscow and Beijing wanted to give Iran at least another month to resolve suspicions that it is secretly bent on building atomic bombs.

The resolution asks the IAEA board to "convey" to the Council a batch of agency reports citing a pattern of Iranian delays and evasions in dealing with IAEA investigators, raising doubts about the nature of Iran's nuclear activities.

"Because there is a P-5 (Council powers) consensus there is now a clear majority in the board willing to take this step.

It means it won't go on the Council agenda before March," said a diplomatic source familiar with the resolution.

"The understanding is: Iran has a month to clean up its act before some action is taken. We think in the end Iran will have too much sense for this dispute to move in nondiplomatic ways."

But the Islamic Republic, which says it wants civilian nuclear energy not bombs but whose calls to destroy Israel and growing missile arsenal alarm the West, grew increasingly defiant as the crunch IAEA meeting neared.

Iran's parliament warned that under a recently enacted law it must resume uranium enrichment and end IAEA snap inspections of nuclear facilities, a pillar of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), if Tehran is sent to the Security Council.

"We would immediately stop voluntary cooperation with the Additional Protocol (spot-check regime). It would mean many areas covered by inspections now would no longer be covered. This would a serious historical mistake," Iranian IAEA envoy Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh said at the Vienna-based IAEA on Wednesday.

If put in Security Council hands, he said, Iran would launch "industrial-scale enrichment", well beyond a pilot project to purify uranium into nuclear fuel whose revival after a 2-1/2 year moratorium prompted the EU to seek a U.N. crackdown.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad scorned international calls for Iran to restrain its nuclear programme.

"I am telling those fake superpowers that the Iranian nation became independent 27 years ago ... on the nuclear case will resist until fully achieving its rights," he told a crowd chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel".