UNITED NATIONS – As President Bush said that he was “deeply suspicious” of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, new reports confirmed that Tehran once again is hiding nuclear activities from the body charged with monitoring nuclear weapons proliferation, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.

In Austria, European diplomats on the IAEA’s 35-member board of directors worked on creating a resolution that would call on Iran to freeze its uranium enrichment activity. If it failed to comply, the Iranian regime would face sanctions from the U.N. Security Council. According to diplomats familiar with the Vienna negotiations, the Europeans encountered resistance from other IAEA board members, led by China and Russia.

Speaking at his Texas ranch yesterday, Mr. Bush expressed his suspicions regarding Iran’s nuclear program. “We’re very deeply suspicious of their desires and call upon our friends in Europe, what’s called the E.U.-3 – Germany, France, and Britain – to lead the diplomatic effort to convince the Iranians to give up their nuclear ambitions,” he told reporters. He added nevertheless that he saw a “positive sign” in reports that Tehran signaled its readiness to return to negotiations with the E.U.-3.

A Washington-based Iranian dissident, Alireza Jafarzadeh, who has helped to unmask Tehran’s deception of the IAEA in the past, yesterday quoted sources inside Iran as saying that the country has manufactured 4,000 centrifuges capable of enriching uranium to weapons grade. “These 4,000 centrifuge machines have not been declared to the IAEA, and the regime has kept the production of these machines hidden from the inspectors while the negotiations with the European Union have been going on over the past 21 months,” Mr. Jafarzadeh told the Associated Press.

The IAEA could not immediately confirm the allegation but said that it takes seriously Mr. Jafarzadeh’s report. He said that the 4,000 centrifuges were ready to be installed at a nuclear facility in Natanz. If Mr. Jafarzadeh’s report is correct, the question for the IAEA may be to determine where the centrifuges were manufactured, and how the Iranians were able to hide their production from agency inspectors, who conduct regular on-site visits.

“There are two huge army bases near Tehran, Parchin, and Levizan,” Israel Radio’s Farsi service director, Menashe Amir, told The New York Sun. “IAEA inspectors visited those bases twice, three and six months ago, and found no incriminating evidence. But the Iranians did not allow them to visit all the facilities in the bases.” While stressing he had no information on the centrifuges, he added that those two bases could be capable of manufacturing such devices.

Mr. Amir also said that certain Israeli nuclear analysts agree with an American intelligence assessment that Iran might be unable to acquire nuclear weapons for another decade, the Washington Post reported last week. Mr. Amir said, however, that those same Israeli analysts caution that while Iran may be eight or nine years away from independently manufacturing a bomb, the regime could import ready-made weapons components, shortening the process, and allowing Iran to become a nuclear power in as little as two years.

Since President Ahmadinejad’s election, Iran has toughened considerably its diplomatic negotiations with the E.U.-3, threatening to break its promise to suspend enrichment, which was made as part of a pact known as the Paris agreement. European negotiators then said they might support transferring the Iran issue from Vienna to the U.N. Security Council.

“The international community will react and will decide the response to give,” France’s foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, said. “I hope it will be united in the face of this grave crisis deliberately provoked by Iran.”

But the American-backed European campaign for stricter diplomacy is being challenged by powerful nations on the IAEA board. China and Russia, which have business interests in Iran, are leading the charge against an effort to pass an IAEA resolution that would order Iran to suspend all enrichment activity or face the Security Council. They are joined by Brazil, South Africa, among other board members.

Russia, China, and their supporters argue that unlike the Paris agreement, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty does not ban enrichment for peaceful purposes, and therefore a blanket ban on enrichment should not be imposed.

“Although suspension of enrichment-related and conversion activities in the Islamic Republic of Iran is a voluntary decision, it is nonetheless essential for confidence-building and for resolution of outstanding issues relevant to Iran’s past undeclared nuclear activities,” IAEA’s director, Mohamed ElBaradei, told reporters in Vienna yesterday.

“Legally, this is a tricky situation,” a Western diplomat, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivities of the negotiations in Vienna, said. He said that while the IAEA might be suspicious of Iran, there is no proof that it intends to build an atomic weapon. The NPT, which governs the agency, “does not deal with intentions,” he said.

Nevertheless, he noted that in the 1970s the IAEA passed a resolution banning all atomic cooperation with South Africa after Russian reconnaissance discovered illicit nuclear activity there. “The difference was that at that time there was political will,” he said, adding that he was not sure such will exists now among a majority of IAEA board members regarding Iran.