The decisive session of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation board of governors comes after three days of divisive meetings on technical cooperation that ended with a compromise between Western and developing states.
Diplomats said the board was now expected to approve Thursday a list of some 800 aid projects for the coming two years, but to drop the item seeking safety expertise for the heavy-water reactor Iran is building in Arak, 200 kilometres (120 miles) south of Tehran.
In a face-saving compromise, the project for Arak is being shelved rather than rejected, which left an Iranian diplomat referring to this as "only a postponement."
Delegates from non-aligned countries anxious to protect the right of developing countries to obtain peaceful nuclear technology said Iran could re-apply at some point for aid to Arak.
But a European Union diplomat said "the bottom line here is that there is no aid for Arak … for the next two years."
The diplomat said there could very well be a United Nations Security Council call by that time for Iran to suspend work at the heavy water reactor, which Iran says is part of a peaceful nuclear program and intended to make medical isotopes, but the West sees it as a proliferation risk.
Both the IAEA and the Security Council have called on Iran to "reconsider" building Arak, and a Western diplomat said the IAEA’s refusal of assistance for the reactor "should reinforce the point" that Tehran should suspend construction.
The United States and the European Union had argued that Iran, suspected of seeking nuclear weapons and threatened with Security Council sanctions, has no right to technical aid for the Arak reactor.
The IAEA board will also be hearing a report detailing lack of Iranian cooperation with the agency’s investigation into US charges that Tehran is secretly developing the bomb.
The IAEA is still unable, after over three years of inspections, to certify Iran’s program as peaceful.
But the non-aligneds, led by Cuba, said Iran should get the aid it has requested as the IAEA has determined that the safety project for Arak is not a proliferation risk.
Divisions caused a deadlock from Monday to Wednesday at the board meeting on technical cooperation, which ordinarily would recommend an aid package that is then rubber-stamped by an IAEA board political meeting.
But this time the technical meeting made no recommendation, merely passing on the package of 832 aid projects to the political session of the board that opens Thursday.
US ambassador Gregory Schulte told reporters the consensus expected Thursday was due to "widespread mistrust of Iran’s nuclear program and the risk of plutonium being diverted from this reactor for use in a weapon."
He had told the board Monday that the "reactor, once completed, will be capable of producing plutonium for one or more nuclear weapons each year."
Another Western diplomat said that "Iran was very isolated" at the board.
Many developing countries joined the consensus as they "didn’t want Iran to jeopardize the (IAEA’s) technical cooperation program," said the diplomat, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
But several diplomats from developing countries disagreed, saying that Iran had been "realistic" in accepting that it could not prevail and would continue building Arak anyway.
Iranian ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh had complained here that a strictly technical matter such as reactor safety was being politicised.
The United States and the European Union, as well as Australia and Canada, are ready to accept the aid package, including seven less controversial programs for Iran, as long as Arak is left out.