Iran formally withdrew its demand to exempt sensitive research from a freeze of key parts of its nuclear programme — a last-minute bid to remove the threat of UN economic sanctions, Western diplomats said on Sunday. ‘‘The IAEA received a letter from Iran regarding the 20 centrifuges. It seems to cover all the elements and appears to be acceptable (to the EU),’’ a diplomat close to IAEA said.Iran’s request to be permitted to operate 20 centrifuges nearly wrecked an agreement it reached with EU to halt all work linked to making atomic fuel.Details of the letter were not immediately available, but a Western diplomat in Vienna said it appeared to be enough to save Iran from the threat of a referral to the UN Security Council and possible economic sanctions.It was unclear what France, Britain and Germany, running the talks with Iran on behalf of EU, thought of Iran’s concession. Hossein Mousavian, the head of Iran’s delegation to the IAEA board of governors, told the semi-official Mehr news agency that Iran had reached an accord with EU.‘‘We have reached an agreement with (IAEA) and also with London, Paris and Berlin,’’ he was quoted as saying. ‘‘Iran requested the centrifuges will not be sealed off. But those centrifuges will be under the agency’s surveillance.’’A Western diplomat said the decision not to seal the centrifuges but to monitor them with cameras was a ‘‘face-saving mechanism’’ that would enable Tehran to say it had not backed down on the issue of the 20 centrifuges.Mousavian added that the EU three now had a draft of a resolution that was to be put to the IAEA’s 35-member board. The resolution, which has been softened at least twice to accommodate Iran’s demands, is intended to make its voluntary freeze a commitment.It was unclear whether the Europeans had caved in to some Iranian demands for the addition of some new language to the EU draft in exchange for Tehran’s renunciation of the centrifuges. Tehran had wanted a clause guaranteeing its ‘‘right’’ to enrich uranium in the future, something the EU did not like. —Reuters
