Iran, EU report nuclear deal

TEHRAN, Iran — Hoping to avoid a U.N. showdown, Iran and the European Union’s three big powers reached a preliminary agreement over Tehran’s nuclear program, Iran’s chief negotiator said Sunday.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament pushed for a bill banning the production of nuclear weapons in a gesture of building more international trust.

The preliminary agreement worked out in Paris with Britain, France and Germany could be finalized in the next few days, chief Iranian negotiator Hossein Mousavian told state-run Iranian television from the French capital, where talks wrapped up Saturday.

If approved, the deal would be a major breakthrough after months of threats and negotiations and could spare Iran from being taken before the U.N. Security Council, where the United States has warned it would seek to impose economic sanctions unless Tehran gives up all uranium enrichment activities, a technology that can produce nuclear fuel or atomic weapons.

The head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, called the agreement “a step in the right direction.”

ElBaradei, speaking on the sidelines of an international conference on nuclear security in Australia, said he hoped the deal would be finalized in “the next few days” and would lead Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment and reprocessing programs.

Diplomats in Austria familiar with the talks’ outcome declined to discuss details. “One or two points remain outstanding, and they hope to resolve those outstanding points by Wednesday,” one diplomat in Austria told the Associated Press.

In proposals to Iran last month, Britain, Germany and France offered a trade deal and peaceful nuclear technology — including a light-water research reactor — if Iran pledged to indefinitely suspend uranium enrichment and related activities such as reprocessing uranium and building centrifuges used to enrich it.

Europe and Washington fear Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons, but Tehran denies such claims, saying its atomic program has peaceful aims, including energy production.

“We had 22 hours of negotiations. … They were very difficult and complicated negotiations but we reached a preliminary agreement at the expert level,” Mousavian said. He said the four countries must now ask their governments to approve the accord.