ElBaradei: Iran incapable of developing bomb now

IAEA chief says Tehran yet to obtain necessary raw unenriched uranium to build even single nuclear weapon. Meanwhile another round of talks amongst UN Security Council members on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program fails to yield results

Even if Iran were to withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty today, the likelihood of the Islamic Republic assembling even a single nuclear weapon in the near future is low, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, said on Monday.

"They do not have even the nuclear material, the raw unenriched uranium to develop one nuclear weapon if they decide to do so," ElBaradei told the Associated Press.

"Even if you decide to walk out tomorrow from the non-proliferation treaty and you go into a lot of scenarios, we're still not going to see Iran tomorrow having nuclear weapons."

Meanwhile on Monday, senior diplomats from six world powers discussed the possibility of imposing new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, but they failed anew to reach a consensus on how or whether to proceed, US officials said.

The high-level talks among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - along with Germany, came after the Chinese dropped objections to the consultations, the officials said. China had blocked the discussion for nearly two weeks, apparently in retaliation for US arms sales to Taiwan.

The United States had been trying to organize the telephone conference call since the beginning of the month after the Security Council, in late September, passed a new resolution reaffirming three previous rounds of sanctions on Iran but imposing no new penalties that the US and its European allies had sought. More