Tehran agreed to suspend its controversial uranium enrichment programme in a deal Sunday with three European Union states -- Britain, France and Germany.

In mid-December they are scheduled to begin talks on building long-term guarantees on Iran's peaceful intentions as well as a package of incentives for Tehran.

"They will give the results of their work three months later. If the results are positive, it (the enrichment suspension) would continue," President Mohammad Khatami told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

"If the other side does not respect its commitments, we will not have any obligations either," he warned, while adding that Iran had struck a "positive accord that respects the national interests".

The deal came just ahead of a November 25 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) examination of Iran's cooperation.

The United States, which accuses the clerical regime in Tehran of seeking nuclear weapons, wants the IAEA board to refer Iran to the UN Security Council and sanctions to be imposed.

And an Iranian opposition group on Wednesday accused the regime of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons programme at a military site near Tehran whose existence had not been disclosed to UN inspectors.

"The site is involved in uranium enrichment, they are developing a number of techniques", Farid Soleimani, senior official of the National Council for Resistance in Iran, said ahead of a press conference in Vienna.

Pakistan, meanwile, denied an Iranian opposition claim that its disgraced chief nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had transferred highly enriched uranium to Tehran in 2001.

A two-year IAEA investigation has revealed activities deemed suspicious, but no "smoking gun" that provides concrete proof of the US allegations.

Iran says it only wants to enrich uranium to make fuel for power generation, but there are fears that it could later divert the programme and produce highly-enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb.

"Before we spoke of a maximum period of six months, but now we do not want to fix a timeframe," Khatami said of his country's pledge to suspend enrichment activities as of November 22 -- just three days before the IAEA meets.

Khatami said it was now up to the IAEA board and the EU to respond in kind to Iran's agreement to cooperate as a first step in proving to Iran that the diplomacy was worthwhile.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Hossein Moussavian also signalled that Tehran was expecting rapid progress in the coming months.

"Within three to four months at the most, we should reach a stage where we have an overall conclusion. If they come to no conclusion or say the only visible guarantee would be to halt enrichment altogether, Iran will not accept this," he told state television.

Iran has committed itself to halt enrichment while the negotiations with the EU are in progress, but the latest comments signal that Iran is unwilling to see them drag on fruitlessly too far into 2005.

But while Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende -- whose country currently holds the European Union's rotating presidency -- said the accord was a "step in the right direction", he warned the enrichment suspension had to be rapidly verified.

"If this does not happen we will have no option but to go to the UN Security Council," he told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Ideally the EU-3 would like Iran to abandon its fuel cycle work altogether.

But Iran is standing by its right to the fuel cycle, saying enrichment for peaceful purposes is permitted by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But it has said it is ready to discuss ways in which it can operate the fuel cycle under full IAEA supervision that would ease any alarm.

Moussavian said Washington had prepared three draft Security Council resolutions on the case and would call for "economic sanctions and other measures" against Tehran if their demands were not met.

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