The United States Tuesday criticized Iran for its "continued failure" to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, after a new report by the agency said Iran was still refusing to halt uranium enrichment.

"We're obviously studying the report, but the key point is that it underscores Iran's continued failure to comply with its international nuclear obligations and also a sustained lack of cooperation with the IAEA," said State Department spokesman Mark Toner.

The IAEA's restricted report, a copy of which was obtained in Vienna by AFP, said Iran was still uncooperative after nearly eight years of attempting to determine if its nuclear program is military or, as Tehran insists, peaceful in its objectives.

The report demands full access to Iran's nuclear facilities, equipment and related documents, and said its uranium enrichment activities inexplicably came to a halt at least one day earlier this month, amid rumors it encountered technical problems.

The nine-page document has been circulated to IAEA member states and will be discussed by the agency's 35-member board of governors at the beginning of December.

Iran is under four sets of UN Security Council sanctions over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, which is at the center of fears about Tehran's atomic ambitions.

Iran and the six world powers involved in nuclear negotiations -- the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany -- have agreed to return to the negotiating table for the first time since the talks stalled in October 2009.

The negotiations will likely resume on December 5 in Geneva, the European Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Monday.

earlier related report
Iran welcomes IAEA report, again denies halting enrichment
Tehran (AFP) Nov 23, 2010 - Iran's atomic chief welcomed on Tuesday a new International Atomic Energy Agency report on its nuclear programme and again denied uranium enrichment was halted for one day this month, ISNA news agency reported.

"The report has improved in comparison with the past and we regard this as a good sign. However, the content is similar to those before," Ali Akbar Salehi told the agency.

Salehi "denied (media) reports and what has appeared in the IAEA report about a one-day halt of enrichment activities in Natanz," amid speculation the activities were the target of a cyberattack.

"In an enrichment plant centrifuges are always being installed, operated, repaired and replaced and this is natural," he said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Salehi "denied Western media reports that enrichment has stopped in Iran," the official news agency IRNA reported.

The IAEA said on Tuesday that "on November 16, no cascades (of uranium-enriching centrifuges at Natanz) were being fed with UF6 (uranium hexaflouride)."

It did say say what it thought caused the outage.

Salehi said on ISNA that Iran's opponents had "sought to create problems in Natanz and Bushehr (the country's nuclear power plant) via contaminated equipment and software. But our engineers were on alert and they did not reach their target."

He also insisted that Iran has "cooperated" with the nuclear watchdog.

"There might be different interpretations of cooperation, but Iran will continue to cooperate with the agency within the safeguard agreement and there is no reason to cooperate beyond that," he added.

The report complained that little had changed by way of the IAEA's overall investigation.

It also said Iran was refusing to halt enrichment or answer questions that the nuclear watchdog has had for the past two years about a possible military dimension to Tehran's nuclear work.

The nine-page document has been circulated to IAEA member states and will be discussed by the agency's 35-member board of governors at the beginning of December.

Iran is under four sets of UN Security Council sanctions over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, which is at the centre of fears about Tehran's atomic ambitions.