Brussels, 13/09/2004 (Agence Europe) - The Foreign Ministers of the EU, meeting on Monday for the External Relations Council under the presidency of Bernard Bot, held a long debate over lunch on Iran, and especially its highly controversial nuclear programme. The Council adopted no conclusions on Iran, but President Bot called upon Iran once again to improve its co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). "We remain highly concerned by the Iranian nuclear programme", French foreign minister Michel Barnier told the press. "Any arms race would have incalculable consequences for peace and stability in the whole region", he warned. In order to prevent just such a revolution, France, Germany and the United Kingdom tabled a draft resolution to the IAEA Board (which also met on Monday, in Vienna), "in which we call upon Iran with insistence to reassure the world" about its nuclear programme, explained Mr Barnier. The draft resolution (which was supported by all the other Member States on Monday, Mr Barnier underlined) calls upon Iran to dissipate all concerns about its nuclear programme by November, when the IAEA (at the next meeting of its Board of Governors) will have to determine whether extra measures are called for. But the draft resolution does not include a clause (as the United States had hoped for) providing for the Iranian issue to be sent automatically before the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. "Discussions with the Iranians remain difficult, and we are not yet reassured about their behaviour", Mr Barnier told the press. In November, the IAEA will be faced with a decision which will depend on the attitude of the Iranian government: either concerns persists, and the case could be sent before the UN Security Council, or Iran will play the transparency game and the matter will be resolved in Vienna, at the IAEA headquarters. "Clearly, I would prefer the latter option", said Mr Barnier. The minister concluded on a note of optimism: "We continue to believe that a political arrangement is still possible with Iran". Meanwhile in Vienna, the Director General of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, said (on the November deadline proposed in the draft resolution) that his agency had set no cut-off point to conclude its investigation into the Iranian nuclear programme. "It is an open process. We will have finished with Iran when we have finished with Iran", he told the opening of the Board of Governors' meeting.