VIENNA, Austria — An International Atomic Energy Agency debate about how to deal with the 18-year effort by Iran to conceal its nuclear programs got off to a sputtering start Thursday, when the Iranian delegation said it would not commit itself to an accord that would open the nation to more intrusive inspections until agreement is reached on how strongly the agency will condemn Iran for its past actions.
A meeting of the agency's board of governors was recessed after two hours.
The agency's director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, tried privately to persuade European nations to toughen the wording of a resolution under consideration by the board to include specific references to Iran's nuclear "breaches" and a statement deploring its actions.
Iran has resisted those terms, and Germany, France, Britain and Russia have argued for a weakly worded resolution in the hope of encouraging Iranian leaders to open their program to further inspections.
The Bush administration has refused to give ground, saying that the agency's charter — and its future credibility — require it to report Iran's actions to the U.N. Security Council. That seemed highly unlikely, and ElBaradei repeated Thursday there was "no evidence" that Iran had pursued a nuclear weapons program.
But U.S. officials and outside experts say there is no other explanation for why a nation with abundant oil would spend millions of dollars on difficult, inefficient methods of enriching uranium at levels that could be useful for bomb-making.
The Bush administration is also pressing the board to include in its resolution a "trigger" that would result in penalties if Iran backed away from any new commitment.
"There is a new draft circulating that will make the United States happier, but not much happier," one diplomat here said.