The United States said Tuesday a draft resolution on Iran's breach of U.N. nuclear obligations was "deficient," while an Iranian opposition group accused Tehran of hiding an "atomic weapons program" from the United Nations.

France, Britain and Germany have circulated a draft resolution criticizing Iran's long history of concealing its atomic program to be discussed by the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors Thursday.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed his disappointment with the work of the European Union's three biggest states.

"The resolution that I was aware (of) being presented by the EU three was not adequate," Powell told reporters on a flight from Brussels to London where he was to join U.S. President Bush who is on a three-day state visit to Britain.

"It did not have the trigger mechanisms in the case of further Iranian intransigence or difficulty," he said.

Powell said the draft was a matter of intense discussion and he said Washington was considering whether to abandon the quest for one entirely, saying, "If a resolution (is) totally inadequate, then maybe don't have a resolution right now."

In Brussels earlier, Powell accused Iran of violating the global pact against atomic weapons and indicated that he felt any resolution on Iran must formally acknowledge this.

"The fact of the matter is that Iran has been in noncompliance" with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Powell said after what he called a "very candid discussion" with his EU counterparts.

"We'll be in discussion with our EU colleagues and other members of the IAEA as to whether or not the resolution is strong enough to convey to the world the difficulties we've had with Iran over the years," he said.

COOPERATION

However, Powell said Iran appeared to be moving in the right direction recently by cooperating with the IAEA.

The United States says Iran has a secret weapons program and wants the 35-nation IAEA board to declare the Islamic republic in "noncompliance" and report its NPT breaches to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions.

The draft resolution, which will undergo revisions over the next few days, merely criticizes Iran for "failures to meet safeguards obligations," diplomats familiar with the text told Reuters. This is too weak for Washington, they said.

Iran denies wanting an atomic bomb and urged the IAEA board not to give in to pressure from Washington.

"America should abandon such useless pressures and stop imposing its ideas on the agency," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told Reuters in Tehran.

Last month, Iran submitted a declaration of its entire nuclear program to the IAEA that Tehran said was accurate and complete in order to comply with an Oct. 31 IAEA deadline to come clean about the full extent of its atomic program.

In this declaration, Iran admitted to reprocessing a small amount of plutonium and concealing a uranium enrichment program for 18 years. But it denies having weapons ambitions.

However, Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, told Reuters his group had specific information about further "recent violations" of Iran's obligation to report all its nuclear activities to the IAEA.

Tehran is also hiding its "secret atomic weapons program," Gobadi said, echoing an often-made U.S. accusation. Iran says it wants nuclear power for the peaceful generation of electricity.

Gobadi said officials working within Iran's nuclear industry had informed some workers that Iran's current policy of openness with the IAEA was "all temporary."

He said his group, which has accurately informed about undeclared nuclear sites in Iran in the past but is considered by Washington as a terrorist group, would give details Wednesday.

The IAEA said last week it had "no evidence" yet that Iran had a clandestine nuclear weapons program but the jury was still out on whether such a program existed.

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