Iran rejects US condition for nuclear talks

Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran would not give up its right to uranium enrichment. Picture / Reuters.

VIENNA - Iran has rejected a conditional offer from Washington for direct talks on its nuclear programme.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tehran was open to discussions with Washington, which severed ties with Iran in 1980, but would not agree to a United States precondition that it stop enriching uranium, the fuel used in nuclear reactors and a vital ingredient to developing atomic bombs.

"We will not give up our nation's natural right (to enrichment), we will not hold talks over it. But we are ready to hold talks over mutual concerns," Mottaki said.

World powers are due to meet in Vienna later to try to agree on a plan to persuade Iran to halt nuclear work that could be a prelude to the development of nuclear weapons.

Washington's offer was a policy shift that a senior US official said had won over Russia and China to pursuing sanctions against Tehran if it spurned the sweeteners.

He said that "if they (Iran) do not do so, there is also agreement that therefore we would have to proceed through the (United Nations) Security Council with a resolution and over time, depending on the Iranian response, move toward sanctions".

"What they've agreed is, if Iran does not accept this offer of negotiations, or accepts and then does not negotiate in good faith, we will return to the Security Council, we will get a resolution," the official told reporters in Washington.

But Mottaki said the US offer of talks, made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, would not break the deadlock.

"Rice's statement was not something new. This is what was said in her previous speeches and interviews. It lacked a logical and new solution to resolve Iran's nuclear issue," he said in Iran's first official reaction.

Iran has consistently said it was ready for talks but would never abandon uranium enrichment completely.

Tehran says its nuclear fuel work is a non-negotiable civilian programme to generate electricity, not a covert quest for bombs as the West suspects.

Rice said the move beefed up a "carrots and sticks" package for Iran whose essentials had been agreed with Britain, France and Germany ahead of the meeting in Vienna and would be discussed further to pin down a consensus with Russia and China.

Foreign ministers from the five veto-holding, permanent powers on the Security Council along with Germany and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana will aim to wrap up weeks of difficult negotiations on a viable strategy towards Iran.

US officials said Russia and China had come around to broad support for the "carrots and sticks" package drafted by the "EU3" - France, Germany and Britain - but details on how to balance the offer remained to be ironed out on Thursday local time.

Rice earlier reiterated that a last-resort military option, should talks or sanctions prove futile, remained on the table.

But Washington, angling for firm Russian support, had accepted language in a proposed Council resolution to underpin the offer that would rule out an immediate threat of military strikes on Tehran, US and European officials said.

- REUTERS