The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog, is about to deliver Iran a sharp rebuke, as positions on each side have hardened.

Among the 35 countries that make up the IAEA’s Board of Governors, there is much less support for Iran than a year ago. More countries hold the view that Iran has been dragging its feet and that the UN should not let it spin out a dance of sporadic co-operation for ever.

But Iran has threatened to restart the most controversial part of the suspended work, while the new conservative-dominated parliament has said that it may judge even present co-operation to be a concession too far.

The focus of the Board of Governors’ meeting in Vienna, which takes place every three months, is a draft resolution embodying the IAEA’s latest judgment on Iran.

The agency is attempting to establish the extent of Iran’s 20-year nuclear research programme, although it discovered some of the main strands in just the past two years. Iran says that the work is for nuclear power and that it has no plan to develop weapons.

The draft IAEA text stops short of referring Iran to the UN Security Council, the step that could lead to sanctions or ultimately, military strikes. Nor does it set a deadline for compliance, as the US wants. But in the text, the IAEA “deplored” the fact that Iran’s co-operation “has not been complete”. The opening statement by Mohammed ElBaradei, the IAEA Director-General, was also strikingly severe.

He said that the agency’s investigation “can’t go on for ever” and that Iran’s help had been “less than satisfactory”. He added — the closest he has come to setting a limit — that “it is essential for the integrity and credibility of the inspection process that we are able to bring these issues to a close within the next few months”.

There are two issues where he wants “accelerated and proactive co-operation”: the extent of experiments to enrich uranium using centrifuges, and the source of traces of enriched uranium. Iran says that they are contamination from imports, a point that the IAEA has so far been unable to confirm with Pakistan, the supposed source.

Enrichment is a process that could be used to make fuel for power stations, and is legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But the technique could also be used to make the explosive material for a nuclear weapon. As ElBaradei argues, the weakness of the treaty is that it allows a country legally to get within months of weapons capability.

The ultimate aim of Britain and its allies in the IAEA is to persuade Iran to give up enrichment and to buy ready-made fuel abroad. But the notion has provoked anger in Iran, where the nuclear work is a source of pride.

Relations between Iran and the IAEA soured markedly in the run-up to the meeting. Britain, France and Germany, the prime authors of this week’s text, feel that Iran has not kept to the spirit of the agreement they signed in October, with great diplomatic fanfare.

One plank of the deal was that Iran would suspend enrichment. It says it has done this, although adds that this is voluntary. But in recent weeks, it threatened to restart its plant to make uranium hexafluoride, the gas used in centrifuges. That has been received very coolly in Europe.

This week, President Khatami has accused Britain, France and Germany of failing to respect their commitments under the same deal to help Iran with peaceful nuclear technology.

The speaker of Iran’s parliament, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, also said that the newly elected parliament may not ratify the Additional Protocol, the second main part of the October deal. Under that clause, Iran must agree to snap inspection of its facilities.

A more conciliatory note was sounded by Kamal Kharrazi, the Foreign Minister, who said: “We have no plans to produce weapons and all of our activities are for peaceful pruposes and nothing is wrong.”

A year ago, European diplomats might have taken these mixed messages as a reflection of the complexity of Iran’s Government, offering an opening for dialogue. They do feel that they have made some progress since last year in persuading Iran to co-operate, if not fully.

If pushed, they add that they believe that Iran is still years away from weapons capability, should it pursue that goal, and that there is time to negotiate. But their mood has hardened.

Britain, France and Germany have moved closer to the US position. Russia and China, previously more sympathetic to Iran, are now less so.

At the moment, the IAEA is not close to referring Iran to the Security Council. But the acrimony of this week has helped to pave the way.

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