Brussels, 03/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - The governing council of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was scheduled to decide on Friday afternoon about whether to send the Iranian nuclear issue to the United Nations Security Council 'for information'. On Friday morning, European diplomats were holding intense talks to try and convince the majority of the 16 non-aligned (independent) states on the governing council to rally round the EU3 resolution (Germany, France and the UK) backed by the United States, China and Russia (see EUROPE 9121 and 9123). The meeting was postponed by two hours on Friday afternoon to allow these talks to continue and an IAEA spokesperson suggested the vote would not actually take place until Friday evening or Saturday morning. The adoption of the resolution was postponed on request from the independent countries, which want the Middle East to be a nuclear-free zone (including Israel, in other words) and for this to be included in the text. The chief Iranian negotiator in Vienna, Javad Vaidi, said adopting a resolution sending the issue to New York would mean killing off the Russian idea of partly relocating some of Iran's uranium enrichment programme to Russia. At the same time, back in Iran the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was repeating his threats of non-cooperation with the IAEA and economic reprisals against the international community.