The meeting came a day after the Security Council adopted a statement calling for an enrichment freeze and a report from the IAEA on Iranian compliance in 30 days.

But Iran swiftly hit back. "Iran's decision on enrichment, particularly research and development is irreversible," Iranian ambassador to the IAEA Aliasghar Soltanieh in Vienna said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, speaking at the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, slammed the UN declaration as an "angry precedent" and a "bad move."

He said the International Atomic Energy Agency should be left to handle the case and described the council request for an IAEA report as "nothing short of injustice, double standards and power politics."

But he added that "we are willing to continue with negotiations [with the IAEA] and also continue with our sincere and constructive cooperation with the agency," Mottaki said.

In Berlin, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the top world body might pass a legally binding resolution if Iran did not comply with the non-binding presidential statement, opening the way to future measures against the Islamic Republic.

Asked if such action could include sanctions, Straw told reporters: "It could do."

But IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran posed no imminent threat and imposing sanctions on Tehran would be a "bad idea."

"We need to lower the pitch," ElBaradei told a forum in the Qatari capital, Doha.

"Nobody has the right to punish Iran for enrichment," he said. "We have not seen nuclear material diverted to a nuclear weapon but we are not saying that the program is used exclusively for peaceful purposes because we still have work to do."

"My message to Iran: the international community is getting impatient and you need to respond by arming me with information," he said.
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After the Berlin talks, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the UN declaration was "a strong sign to Iran that negotiation not confrontation should be their course."

"It is now up to Iran to make a choice ... between isolation brought about by its own actions or a return to the negotiating table," added German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the meeting's host.

"If they bring themselves into compliance then all sorts of good things, not bad things, will follow," he added.

Both Steinmeier and Rice dodged questions about the possible use of sanctions.

"Now a 30-day period is running and it is Iran's move. Everything else does not belong in the public domain at the present time," he said.

The UN statement does not say what consequences might follow if Tehran does not halt uranium enrichment, and Russia and China insisted economic sanctions or military action did not belong on the table.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said neither Moscow nor Beijing would tolerate the use of force against Iran. "Any ideas of resolving the matter by compulsion and force are extremely counter-productive," he said.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Beijing believed a diplomatic solution remained possible.

Referring to a previous Iranian suggestion on the "involvement of foreign companies in the Iranian fuel cycle program" inside Iran, Mottaki said: "One possibility to resolve the issue could be the establishment of a regional consortium on fuel cycle development."

Mottaki's statement implied that the consortium would be based in Iran.

He told the permanent conference the center could involve "regional countries which have already developed fuel cycle programs at the national level and intend to develop further their program for civilian purposes."

His remarks come as the UN Security Council's five permanent members prepare to discuss the issue Thursday.

All 15 members of the council are studying a new, third version of a draft statement on Iran.

The statement - drawn up by France and the UK - urges Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.

It puts more emphasis on the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), giving it a longer timeframe to report back on Iran's compliance with demands.

The US and many other Western nations on the IAEA board suspect that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Tehran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.

Berlin meeting

"The non-proliferation regime must remain the only issue, and no use of force can be supported," Mr Lavrov said in Moscow.

He stressed that a strategy for the settlement of Iran's nuclear crisis should be "based on IAEA recommendations".

Mr Lavrov was speaking ahead of a meeting of top diplomats from the five UN veto-wielding nations - Russia, the US, UK, France and China - in the German capital, Berlin, to discuss the issue. Germany will also be taking part in the talks.

The UK, France and the US would like agreement on the latest draft statement before the Berlin talks start, reports the BBC's Susannah Price in New York.

Ambassadors from the five permanent members of the UN have already discussed the draft.

The US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, has said they reached agreement on the bulk of the text but still had some way to go.

Repeated calls

The UK and France hope their latest version of the statement will win approval from China and Russia.

Moscow is concerned that Security Council involvement could lead to sanctions against Iran and it wants the IAEA to take the lead, our correspondent says.

The latest draft repeats the call for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, but omits some of the detailed demands - referring instead to an IAEA resolution on the issue.

It again calls for the IAEA's director general to report back on Iran's compliance, but extends the deadline from 14 to 30 days.

And while it no longer says the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a threat to international peace and security, the draft statement does refer to the Security Council's responsibility to maintain peace.

Does this story line sound familiar? The vice president of the United States gives a major speech focused on the threat from an oil-rich nation in the Middle East. The U.S. secretary of state tells congress that the same nation is our most serious global challenge. The secretary of defense calls that nation the leading supporter of global terrorism. The president blames it for attacks on U.S. troops. The intelligence agencies say the nuclear threat from this nation is 10 years away, but the director of intelligence paints a more ominous picture. A new U.S. national security strategy trumpets preemptive attacks and highlights the country as a major threat. And neoconservatives beat the war drums, as the cable media banner their stories with words like "countdown" and "showdown."

The nation making headlines today, of course, is Iran, not Iraq. But the parallels are striking. Three years after senior administration officials systematically misled the nation into a disastrous war, they could well be trying to do it again.

Nothing is clear, yet. For months, I have told interviewers that no senior political or military official was seriously considering a military attack on Iran. In the last few weeks, I have changed my view. In part, this shift was triggered by colleagues with close ties to the Pentagon and the executive branch who have convinced me that some senior officials have already made up their minds: They want to hit Iran.

I argued with my friends. I pointed out that a military strike would be disastrous for the United States. It would rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular regime, inflame anti-American anger around the Muslim world, and jeopardize the already fragile U.S. position in Iraq. And it would accelerate, not delay, the Iranian nuclear program. Hard-liners in Tehran would be proven right in their claim that the only thing that can deter the United States is a nuclear bomb. Iranian leaders could respond with a crash nuclear program that could produce a bomb in a few years.

My friends reminded me that I had said the same about Iraq-that I was the last remaining person in Washington who believed President George W. Bush when he said that he was committed to a diplomatic solution. But this time, it is the administration's own statements that have convinced me. What I previously dismissed as posturing, I now believe may be a coordinated campaign to prepare for a military strike on Iran.

The unfolding administration strategy appears to be an effort to repeat its successful campaign for the Iraq war. It is now trying to link Iran to the 9/11 attacks by repeatedly claiming that Iran is the main state sponsor of terrorism in the world (though this suggestion is highly questionable). It is also attempting to make the threat urgent by arguing that Iran might soon pass a "point of no return" if it can perfect the technology of enriching uranium, even though many other nations have gone far beyond Iran's capabilities and stopped their programs short of weapons. And, of course, it is now publicly linking Iran to the Iraqi insurgency and the improvised explosive devices used to kill and maim U.S. troops in Iraq, though Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace admitted there is no evidence to support this claim.

If diplomacy fails, the administration might be able to convince leading Democrats to back a resolution for the use of force against Iran. Many Democrats have been trying to burnish a hawkish image and place themselves to the right of the president on this issue. They may find themselves trapped by their own rhetoric, particularly those with presidential ambitions.

The factual debate during the next six months will revolve around the threat assessment. How close is Iran to developing the ability to enrich uranium for fuel or bombs? Is there a secret weapons program? Are there secret underground facilities? What would it mean if small-scale enrichment experiments succeed?

Fortunately, we know more about Iran's nuclear program now than we ever knew about Iraq's (or, for that matter, those of India, Israel, and Pakistan). International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors have been in Iran for more than 3 years investigating all claims of weapons-related work. The United States has satellite reconnaissance, covert programs, and Iranian dissidents providing further information. The key now is to get all this information on the table for an open debate.

The administration should now declassify the information it used to estimate how long it will be until Iran has the capability to make a bomb. The Washington Post reported last August that this national intelligence estimate says Iran is a decade away. We need to see the basis for this judgment and all, if any, dissenting opinions. The congressional intelligence committees should be conducting their own reviews of the assessments, including open hearings with independent experts and IAEA officials. Influential groups, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, should conduct their own sessions and studies.

An accurate and fully understood assessment of the status and potential of Iran's nuclear program is the essential basis for any policy. We cannot let the political or ideological agenda of a small group determine a national security decision that could create havoc in a critical area of the globe. Not again.

Joseph Cirincione is director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Jaafari said he would work to fold the country's myriad militias into the official security forces and ensure that recruits and top security ministers abandon their ethnic or sectarian loyalties.

The existence of militias has emerged as the greatest source of contention between American officials and Shiite leaders like Jaafari, with the American ambassador arguing in the past week that militias are killing more people than the Sunni Arab-led insurgency. Dozens of bodies, garroted or killed with gunshots to the head, turn up almost daily in Baghdad, fueling sectarian tensions that are pushing Iraq closer to full-scale civil war.

The embattled Jaafari made his remarks in an hourlong interview with The New York Times at his home, a Saddam Hussein-era palace with an artificial lake at the heart of the fortified Green Zone. He spoke in a calm manner, relaxing in a black pinstripe suit in a ground floor office lined with books like the multivolume "The World of Civilizations."

"There was a stand from both the American government and President Bush to promote a democratic policy and protect its interests," he said. "But now there's concern among the Iraqi people that the democratic process is being threatened."

"The source of this is that some American figures have made statements that interfere with the results of the democratic process," he said. "These reservations began when the biggest bloc in Parliament chose its candidate for prime minister."

The bookish, soft-spoken Jaafari is at the center of the deadlock in talks over forming a new government, with the main Kurdish, Sunni Arab and secular blocs in the 275-member Parliament staunchly opposing the Shiite bloc's nomination of Jaafari for prime minister.

Senior Shiite politicians said Tuesday that the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, had weighed in over the weekend, telling the leader of the Shiite bloc that President George W. Bush did not want Jaafari as prime minister. That was the first time the Americans had openly expressed a preference for the occupant of post, the politicians said, and it showed the Bush administration's acute impatience over the stagnant political process. Relations between Shiite leaders and the Americans have been fraying for months, and reached a crisis point after a bloody assault on a Shiite mosque compound Sunday night by American and Iraqi forces.

Jaafari said in the interview that Khalilzad had visited him Wednesday morning, but had not indicated that Jaafari should abandon his job. The two spoke about forming the government, he said.

American reactions to the political process can be seen as either supporting or interfering in Iraqi decisions, said Jaafari, head of the Islamic Dawa Party and a former exile in Iran and London. "When it takes the form of interference, it makes the Iraqi people worried," he added. "For that reason, the Iraqi people want to ensure that these reactions stay in a positive frame and do not cross over into interference that damages the results of the democratic process."

According to the Constitution, the largest bloc in Parliament, in this case the religious Shiites, has the right to nominate a prime minister. Jaafari won that nomination in a secret ballot last month among the 130 Shiite members of Parliament. But his victory was a narrow one: He came out on top by only one vote after getting the support of Sadr, who controls 32 seats.

That alliance has ignited concern among the Americans that Jaafari will do little to rein in Sadr, who led two fierce rebellions against the U.S. military in 2004. Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, went rampaging in Baghdad after the Feb. 22 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra and after a series of car bomb explosions on March 12 in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. The violence left hundreds dead and Sunni mosques burned to the ground.

After the secret ballot last month, Sadr politicians said Jaafari had agreed to meet all their political demands in exchange for their votes. Sadr has been pushing for control of service ministries like health, transportation and electricity.

Jaafari did not say in the interview what deals he had cut with Sadr, but asserted that engagement with the cleric's movement was needed for the stability of Iraq. He said he had disagreed with L. Paul Bremer 3rd, the former U.S. proconsul, when Bremer barred Sadr and some Sunni Arab groups from the Iraqi Governing Council in 2003.

"The delay in getting them to join led to the situation of them becoming violent elements," he said. "I look at them as part of Iraq's de facto reality, whether some of the individual people are negative or positive. Anyone who's part of the Iraqi reality should be part of the Iraqi house."

Jaafari used similar language when laying out his policy toward militias - that inclusion rather than isolation was the proper strategy. The Iraqi government, he said, will try "to meld them, take them, take their names and make them join the army and police forces. And they will respect the army or police rather than the militias."

Recruiting militia members into the Iraqi security forces has not been a problem under the Jaafari government. The issue has been getting those fighters to act as impartial defenders of the state rather than as political partisans.

The police forces are stocked with members of the Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization, an Iranian-trained militia, who still exhibit obvious loyalties to their political party leaders. The police forces have performed poorly when ordered to contain militia violence, as in the aftermath of the Samarra shrine bombing. They even cruise around in some cities with images of Sadr or other religious politicians on their squad cars.

There is growing evidence of uniformed death squads operating out of the Shiite-run Interior Ministry, and Khalilzad has been lobbying the Iraqis to place nonsectarian people in charge of the Interior and Defense ministries in the next government. That has caused friction with Shiite leaders. Some have even accused the ambassador of implicitly backing the Sunni-led insurgency. But Jaafari said he supported the goal of the Americans.

"We insist that the ministers in the next cabinet, especially the ministers of defense and the interior, shouldn't be connected to any militias, and they should be non-sectarian," he said. "They should be experienced in security work. They should keep the institutions as security institutions, not as political institutions. They should work for the central government."

So far, the entire Shiite bloc has publicly backed Jaafari despite the growing opposition to his candidacy. But the alliance could split over this issue. Adel Abdul Mahdi, the American-favored politician who lost to Jaafari in the secret vote, has hinted he would step forward as a candidate again if he had enough support.

Even now the MoD admits that some British casualties may have been overlooked, particularly during the invasion itself, "when the tempo of operations meant that some minor injuries may not have been reported in the heat of the action". They also said that they cannot keep a central record of all casualties because it might breach "patient confidentiality".

The MoD stressed that many of the injuries or illnesses treated will have been relatively minor and that the majority who were flown home were ill, rather than injured.

"All casualties suffered by UK forces are a source of profound regret," the Defence Secretary, John Reid, said. "UK personnel have put their lives on the line to help the Iraqis build a strong, stable Iraq and we cannot pay high enough tribute to the job they are doing, or the sacrifice some of them have made."

Labour MPs were staggered by a total for all casualties equivalent to almost the entire British presence in Iraq today. Mr Reid said this month that the number of British troops stationed there is to be cut by 800, to just over 7,000.

Ian Gibson, one of the Labour MPs who has been demanding to know the full casualty figures, said he would write to Mr Reid to ask how many of the 4,000 medical evacuees needed hospital treatment after their return to the UK, and where they were treated.

"MPs will want to know whether any of their constituents are among those 4,000 and whether they are in hospital locally, because if they are they will want to visit them," he said. "Ministers might even like to visit them," he added.

Peter Kilfolye, a former defence minister, whose home city of Liverpool is being visited today by the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said: "The first thing that strikes me is when Jack Straw and Condoleezza Rice are strutting around here, perhaps they should be looking at these figures.

"The MoD is finding it extremely difficult to get their figures right. I welcome the fact that they have now made these figures public, but they show that we are paying a far higher price than we realised for what is not a very productive role in Iraq. This is an argument for getting our troops out."

Until this year, the MoD refused to give any casualty figures other than the number of Britons killed in action, which has reached 103. In January, Mr Reid gave out a figure for the number of wounded, but the figure he gave - 230 - raised immediate suspicion that it was too low.

During January this year, 65 Britons required hospital treatment in Iraq, and 56 were sent home on medical grounds. This suggests that the casualty rate has fallen since the worst periods of the conflict, when the figure was in the hundreds.