According to the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, which convened the Sept. 29-30 conference in Cairo, participants included two Iranians and three Israelis, notably Iran's chief ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency and a senior official of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission.
At least three media outlets reported that the two sides exchanged heated comments during an open session of the conference, which was sponsored by the governments of Australia and Japan. Officials in Iran and Israel separately denied that representatives of their countries either met face-to-face or spoke to each other directly.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that at one point during the conference, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, directly asked Meirav Zafary-Odiz, chief of policy and arms control at the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, whether Israel possesses nuclear weapons. The paper said Zafary-Odiz smiled but did not respond. It also said she told the conference that Israel would be prepared to discuss a nuclear freeze in the Middle East only at some future date when the region was at peace.
Australia's The Age newspaper said Iranian and Israeli delegates had a "very robust exchange" during the conference. Agence France-Presse said another Israeli participant, Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former internal security and foreign minister who sits on the commission's advisory board, traded heated remarks with Soltanieh, with the Iranian denying the Israeli's charge that Iran intends to produce a nuclear weapon.
In Tehran, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a press adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, disputed the media accounts and accused Israel of trying to obstruct nuclear negotiations between Iran and the United States.
"Israel is illegitimate; we don't recognize that country," Javanfekr said. "There can never be any negotiations and relations with it." He added: "This is Zionist news spinning. They are fabricating lies, to give themselves stature and credit."
In Israel, a spokeswoman for the Atomic Energy Commission, Yael Doron, said each country stated its position on nuclear disarmament separately at the conference. "The two sides did not meet or speak to one another directly," she said, according to the Associated Press.
In a joint statement after the Cairo conference, the Australian and Japanese co-chairmen of the international commission said the meeting "examined various options for creating a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction," but they shed no light on the dispute over the purported Iranian-Israeli exchanges. The statement said only, "Short of nuclear disarmament, there was lively debate over the possible shape and potential value of assurances by nuclear weapon states about non-use of nuclear weapons against countries without such weapons."
The conflicting reports about the gathering came as Iranian, U.S., Russian and other negotiators in Vienna awaited a green light from Iran's leaders on a draft agreement to transfer the bulk of Iran's enriched uranium stockpile out of the country as part of a proposed deal to resolve a dispute over Tehran's uranium-enrichment program while providing much-needed fuel for an Iranian medical research reactor. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has said he wants a final answer on the draft agreement by Friday.
Iranian leaders generally seemed positive about the proposal, but Soltanieh on Wednesday cautioned against hasty conclusions and stressed that Iran's leaders now have to decide.
Rahman Ghahremanpour, a nonproliferation expert at the Tehran-based Center for Strategic Studies, said in an interview that the Vienna talks could pave the way for a solution to the long-running dispute. The United States and its allies have accused Iran of covertly planning to fabricate a nuclear weapon, while Iran asserts that its nuclear program is strictly peaceful and intended only to generate electricity, as well as produce a small amount of isotopes for medical purposes.
"Technically, a solution could be that about 60 percent of Iran's nuclear fuel would be enriched outside the country," Ghahremanpour said. Such a deal would mean that Iran could not create enough fissile material to produce a nuclear weapon, but it would have control over domestically produced low-enriched uranium -- the fuel needed for its future nuclear power plants. Iran says it does not want to rely on Western promises to provide enriched uranium for the plants because it does not trust such pledges and insists on having its own independent fuel supply.
"Such steps would build confidence," Ghahremanpour said. "Politicians now have to decide, but partly enriching material abroad is also accepted by Brazil for a certain period of time."
He called reports of the exchanges between Iranian and Israeli representatives at the Cairo conference "psychological warfare," asserting that adversaries "want to claim that pressure on Iran is effective."
Members of Iran's vocal opposition to the Ahmadinejad government said the Vienna negotiations are influenced by Iran's post-election crisis, which left dozens of protesters dead and several influential anti-Ahmadinejad politicians imprisoned in the wake of the country's disputed June 12 presidential vote.
"Now that the Iranian government is weak, you would expect the U.S. to pressure Iran over its nuclear program, not come up with a compromise," said Mashallah Shamsovaezin, a critic of the Ahmadinejad government. "But Iran is now at the closest to being a failed state since the revolution. The U.S. administration does not want to push it over that edge, because they want to deal with the Iranian nation and not only with his representatives."
Javanfekr, the Ahmadinejad adviser, charged that Israel is trying to sabotage the negotiations in Vienna in pursuit of its goal of isolating Iran.
"Naturally, the Zionist regime is . . . trying to create problems," he said. Israel does not want Iran and other countries "to reach any agreements or even better understanding," he said. "They will try to prevent that at all costs."
Iran and Israel, which have not had relations since the 1979 Islamic revolution, often participate in multilateral meetings. Analysts said the two countries' representatives have sat in the same rooms and sometimes at the same tables at United Nations sessions and at international conferences and seminars, and they occasionally even respond to accusations made against each other.
"But that does not mean they engage in active dialogue," said Mohammed Marandi, head of the Department of North American Studies at the University of Tehran. He said such discussions would give the impression that Iran recognizes Israel, which it does not.
"Maybe some media organizations want to create an image that Iran is secretly talking to Israel, while in fact they are only trading accusations," said Marandi. "This is nothing new."
Branigin reported from Washington.
