VIENNA, November 21 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog Friday, November 21, approved an additional protocol allowing wider inspections in Iran, clearing the way for Tehran to sign on to the new regime.

The protocol gives the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors the right to make unannounced visits to suspect sites, even if the host country has not declared them as open to inspection.

"The board has approved Iran's additional protocol and now it is ready to be signed," said Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for IAEA, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei maintains that wider inspections are crucial to be able to guarantee that Iran is not secretly producing nuclear weapons.

Earlier Friday, ElBaradei told reporters: "I think things are moving but they need more time. They may not table a resolution before some time next week."

He was speaking as the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors began a second day of talks in Vienna Friday, after a long day Thursday that had included a short plenary session and then long hours of informal, closed-door meetings.

The United States and Europe's big three - Britain, France and Germany - are clashing in the wording of a resolution over how strongly to come down on Iran, which Washington accuses of trying to secretly develop atomic weapons, diplomats said.

The so-called Euro 3 are pushing for cooperation rather than confrontation, especially since their Foreign Ministers won concessions from Iran on October 21 on working with the IAEA in exchange for a promise not to take the issue to the U.N. Security Council, according to diplomats.

The United States, which was not party to this promise, wants to declare the Islamic Republic in "non-compliance" with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a State Department spokesman said in Washington Thursday.

"Non-compliance" is the trigger-word for bringing the issue before the Security Council, which could impose sanctions.

The United States "is looking for some pretty strong language and is willing to compromise only to a point," a Western diplomat said.

"If we're not going to have an extremely strong resolution, why have a resolution at all," he said.

Iran was already showing in Vienna that it linked future cooperation to a non-threatening resolution.

But Iran has refused at the IAEA board meeting to set a date for signing the protocol until its sees what sort of a resolution the board is to pass on Iranian violations over the past 18 years of NPT safeguards agreements.

Asked if this was not a form of blackmail to put pressure towards a weak resolution, ElBaradei said: "Everybody is trying to use whatever assets they have to try to negotiate."

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said in Tehran Thursday that if EU countries fail to prevent Iran from being declared in non-compliance, Tehran will abandon commitments made to the IAEA.

"We must wait until tomorrow (Friday) to see if the Americans have succeeded in their attempts," Kharazi said, quoted by Iran's IRNA news agency.

ElBaradei said Thursday that Iran must be cited for violating nuclear non-proliferation agreements but must also receive credit for turning a new page.

The IAEA head last week reported Iranian breaches in compliance during 18 years of hidden nuclear activities, including making small amounts of plutonium and enriched uranium, which can be materials for making the bomb.

But ElBaradei said in the report there was as yet no proof that Iran was secretly trying to make nuclear weapons, something Washington said was "simply impossible to believe."

A key sticking point in the Euro 3's draft resolution is its saying that if Iran continues to cooperate, the issue of its compliance should stay with the IAEA.

The text says that should ElBaradei "report that there have been further significant failures, the board of governors would meet immediately and decide upon measures to be taken," according to a copy shown to reporters.

A diplomat said this formulation, however, was not enough since the term "significant failures" was vague.

"A failure is a failure," the diplomat said, stressing that the resolution should also unambiguously say when the matter would go to the Security Council.

Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA charged Friday that Iran has brazenly and systematically violated its nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

"Iran's breaches of its obligations have been brazen and systematic and far from merely 'technical' ones," Ken Brill told the board of governors meeting of the IAEA in Vienna.

Brill said that Iran could not be seen as "a state that tried in good faith to meet its (safeguards) obligations" under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, even if it was now ready to cooperate after violations.

Brill further added that the report "makes unequivocally clear that Iran chose, as a matter of government policy sustained for well over a decade, to violate its safeguards obligations in full knowledge that its actions and omissions were violations.

"Indeed, when the truth about its secret nuclear program first began to come out, Iran immediately adopted and implemented a cynical strategy of further denial, delay and deception."

ElBaradei said the IAEA has no "evidence," however, that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, with investigations continuing.

But Brill said there clearly was evidence, but no "proof", and that ElBaradei's comment had been misinterpreted.

Brill said Iran was now "asking us to pass over its record of deception on the strength of today's bare assurances that now it is telling the truth.

"No serious observer of Iran's record can accept that argument," he added.

The additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was created in 1997 after the IAEA discovered that previous inspections had not been broad enough to uncover hidden nuclear activities in Iraq.