Vienna, May 24 (AP): The United States has lodged a formal protest with the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency for suggesting that Iran be allowed to keep some elements of its uranium enrichment program, and France and Britain plan to do the same, diplomats said Thursday.

The diplomats said Gregory L. Schulte, the chief U.S. representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, had expressed his displeasure in a meeting Wednesday with IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei. His British and French counterparts would follow suit as early as Friday, said the diplomats, who demanded anonymity because their information was confidential.

``They have an appointment with ElBaradei tomorrow,'' said one of the diplomats, alluding to the heads of the British and French missions to the IAEA.

IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming confirmed that Schulte and ElBaradei had met on Wednesday but she declined to elaborate beyond saying the mood was ``cordial.''

Diplomats first revealed such plans on Tuesday, saying the U.S. was seeking allied support for a protest. On Thursday, they told The Associated Press that Washington had enlisted the French and British. Canada, Australia and several other countries normally backing Washington on Iran had not made a decision as of Thursday on whether to back the move, they said.

The Americans and their allies are taking issue with recent public suggestions by ElBaradei that it is too late to force Tehran to scrap its enrichment program as demanded by the U.N. Security Council and his push instead for implementing inspection safeguards to prevent an expansion of the program.

``I believe that (U.N.) demand has been superseded by events,'' ElBaradei told the Spanish newspaper ABC last week. Instead, he said, ``the important thing now is to concentrate on Iran not taking it to industrial scale.''

France had already publicly rebuffed ElBaradei on Wednesday. French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said Paris shared ``the gist of concerns expressed by our American partners _ along with several other partners, for that matter,'' adding: ``I can confirm that our permanent representative in Vienna will take part in the American initiative.''

The three nations apparently are concerned ElBaradei's statements could exacerbate traditional splits between Russia and China and the United States, Britain and France, the three other permanent Security Council members on how to deal with Tehran's nuclear defiance.

While the Western council members have traditionally pushed for tough sanctions on Iran for refusing a council demand that it freeze all enrichment activities, opposition by Moscow and Beijing has led them to settle for watered-down sanctions less rigid than they originally proposed since the first set was agreed on Dec. 23.

The issue gained in importance Wednesday, when ElBaradei sent a report to the Security Council that says Iran has expanded its enrichment activities instead of freezing them _ a finding that could act as a trigger for a third set of sanctions.

Despite such pressure, ElBaradei was unlikely to stop expressing his views, said a U.N official who also demanded anonymity, adding: ``He feels very strongly that he needs to speak his mind.''

At a conference in Luxembourg on Thursday, ElBaradei would not offer his own position on when Iran would be able to produce nuclear weapons. But he added, ``I tend to agree with (CIA estimates) that even if Iran wanted to go to nuclear weapons it would not be before the end of this decade or sometime in the middle of the next'' _ three to eight years.

Iran's ultimate stated goal is running 54,000 centrifuges to churn out enriched uranium _ enough for dozens of nuclear warheads a year. Although Tehran insists it wants the technology only to generate nuclear power, it has been hit with two sets of U.N. sanctions because of suspicions bred by nearly two decades of Tehran's clandestine nuclear activities, including questionable black-market acquisitions of equipment and blueprints that appear linked to weapons plans.

In a speech to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards on Thursday, the country's hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, again rejected any suspension of enrichment.

``If we stop for a while, they (Iran's enemies) will achieve their goals,'' he said.

Also on Thursday, Liu Zhenmin, China's deputy U.N. ambassador, said that senior experts from the five Security Council nations plus Germany _ the six powers in the forefront of attempts to rein in Iran's nuclear program _ will meet by the end of the month to discuss their next steps on Iran.

Liu said the purpose of the meeting, possibly in Paris, will be to consider what to say in talks with the Iranians to promote further negotiations, and what the Security Council could do if the talks fail.