A senior Iranian envoy abruptly announced yesterday that last-ditch talks on his country's disputed nuclear programme were postponed, moving Teheran a step closer to UN sanctions after it defied a deadline to freeze uranium enrichment.

The talks had been tentatively set for yesterday in Vienna as a final attempt to see if there was common ground to start negotiations between Iran and the six nations that have been trying to persuade Iran to limit its nuclear programme.

But while the European Union's Javier Solana had been ready to fly to the Austrian capital at short notice, the talks had been left hanging by uncertainty over whether Iranian nuclear envoy Ali Larijani would come.

"We will not have the meeting today in Vienna," said Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, the chief Iranian envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). "Both sides are arranging (a meeting) for a couple of days later."

There was no immediate comment from Solana's office in Brussels. But although Soltanieh said the decision to postpone any meeting had been mutual, it appeared that Iranian reluctance to attend had scuttled the chance of talks yesterday.

Soltanieh said "a procedural matter" had led to the postponement, but offered no details. In Teheran, Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said only the time and place of any meeting continued to be "under discussion by both sides."

Iran defied an August 31 deadline by the UN Security Council to freeze uranium enrichment.

Still, the five permanent council members and Germany the six powers attempting to entice Iran into negotiating on its nuclear program had decided to hold off starting work on sanctions until the outcome of any talks between Solana and Larijani.

Senior negotiators of those six countries were to meet in Berlin today to plan their further Iran strategy.

Russia appeared to be contemplating the possibility of sanctions although comments by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov indicated Moscow continued to oppose harsh and quick UN Security Council punishment.

"We'll decide whether or not to make use of these measures in a complex way, but guided by just one goal to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," Lavrov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. "We are also aware that economic pressure should be proportional to a real threat to peace and security."

Lavrov spoke to reporters in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he was accompanying President Vladimir Putin on a state visit.

He said the UN Security Council's recent resolution on Iran hold out the possibility of further measures on Iran including those spelled out in Article 41 of the UN Charter. The article allows punishments that do not involve the use of armed force, such as economic penalties, banning air travel or breaking diplomatic relations.

Source: China Daily