"After hours of last minute conversation with Tehran during a short pause at the meeting of the Board of the IAEA Directors, Iranian representatives at the Vienna-based Agency submitted a new letter hinting that Iran would accept the Directors new resolution", reported from Vienna Mr. Morteza Ra’isi, the correspondent of the BBC’s Persian service.

A key meeting of the agency's board of governors considering the report has been adjourned until Wednesday, after delegates supporting the American position against that of defended by the Europeans failed to agree on the new resolution presented jointly by Berlin, London and Paris.

"As Iran bowed to IAEA demands to sign both the Additional Protocol (to the Non Proliferation Treaty) and a new resolution imposing more stringent inspections, the Board of the Directors commissioned Dr el-Brade’i to finish the work with the Iranians in due time", Mr. Ra’isi said.

"By that time we will have a draft resolution hopefully to be adopted, I still believe, by consensus", el-Brade’i said.

The United States that has again accused the IAEA of damaging its credibility in its latest report on Iran's nuclear activities appear to have dropped demands that Iran’s case be reported to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.

However, Mr. Kenneth Brill, the US Ambassador the IAEA questioned the Agency’s inspectors earlier findings that there was no evidence that Iran has nuclear programme for military purposes, opening a new rift with both Mr. el-Barade’i who defended the report in the one hand and Britain, France and Germany on the other.

"We have not said that we have come to the conclusion that the Iranian program is exclusively for peaceful purposes, because we still have work to do", the IAEA chief said, adding "it was difficult to believe that Iran had now come clean given its past history of deception".

The United States claims that Iran’s programmes for building nuclear-powered electricity station is a "front" for producing atomic weapons, but both Tehran and Moscow that is assisting Iran in the construction of a 1000 megawatts, 800 million US Dollars atomic electrical plant in the Persian Gulf port of Booshehr insist that the project if solely for peaceful and civilian aims, mainly responding to the country’s growing need for electricity.

Mr. Brill told the meeting of the Directors that he found the report's assertion was "questionable", regardless of the fact that in his report, Mr el-Barade’i had confirmed that Iran had secretly produced plutonium and enriched uranium, materials, which can be used in nuclear weapons.

Describing the American scepticism about the failure of the inspectors to find evidence of nuclear weapons programme in Iran as "disingenuous", Mr el-Barade’i pointed out that work was still in progress on verifying Iran's nuclear activities.

"We reflect facts, as radar does, without partiality. We do not jump to conclusions or make leaps of faith. We have not said that we have come to the conclusion that the Iranian program is exclusively for peaceful purposes, because we still have work to do", the American news agency Associated Press quoted him as having said.

After a five hours marathon talk with Foreign Affairs ministers of Britain, France and Germany, Hojjatoleslam Hasan Rohani, the influential Secretary f Iran’s Supreme Council for National Security agreed to sign the Additional Protocols and suspend all its uranium enriching activities.

After the US has urged the Agency to declare Tehran in non-compliance with the NPT, the European troika drafted a new resolution aimed at imposing harsher inspections for Iran’s nuclear-related projects.

Though Iran had warned that it might reconsider signing this additional protocol if such a resolution is issued, but it backed off on the last minute in order to prevent the row reaching the UN’s Security Council.

Former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Friday refreshed vows that Iran would not accept any "oppressive" decision coming out of the meeting of the Board of Governors.

"The next few hours are the hours of trial. We are waiting to see how much the US can impose its own inhuman and colonial views on the Board through threat, coercion and bribing", he said, quoted by the official news agency IRNA.

"The ball is now in their (IAEA) ground ... If they do bad, the things will be then out of our control, and I hope they take no illogical decision because no oppressive decision can ever deprive Iran from its due rights", added the cleric, who is also the Chairman of the Assembly for Discerning the State’s Interests (ADIS), or the Expediency Council, a body controlled by the conservatives with the power of deciding on the regime’s strategic policies.