A preparatory meeting, held this week at UN headquarters, ended Friday with an agreement on some minimal procedures but without an agenda for the conference.

"Iran almost singlehandedly managed to block the adoption of an agenda in the hope of avoiding the conference devoting too much attention to the behavior of those of its members suspected of being proliferators," a diplomat told AFP.

"The United States showed toughness, but Iran did not display any flexibility," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The United States has accused Iran of trying to obtain nuclear weapons and of misleading inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who monitor Iranian nuclear installations which, according to Teheran, pursue peaceful aims.

"Technical preparations for the conference will undoubtedly be slowed down a little," the diplomat said. "But the failure to adopt an agenda this week should present an unsurmountable obstacle."

Participants of the preparatory meeting decided that the review conference will proceed at UN headquarters in New York on May 2-27, 2005, under the presidency of Brazil.

Signed in 1968, the NPT limits possession of nuclear weapons to countries that had them at the time of the treaty's signing.

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