Iran has prepared an "updated nuclear proposal" and is ready to talk to world powers, state television quoted the Islamic Republic's chief nuclear negotiator as saying today.
The announcement was made a day before six world powers were expected to hold high-level talks in Germany on what to do about Iran's contentious nuclear programme. The West suspects the Islamic state is seeking to build bombs. Iran denies the charge.
"Iran has prepared an updated nuclear proposal and is ready to resume negotiations with world powers," al-Alam, Iran's Arabic-language satellite channel, quoted chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili as saying.
The official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying Iran was ready to use its "capacities to remove common concerns on the international scene".
Such language may cause suspicion in Western capitals that Iran's proposal, like others before, fails to specifically address their concerns about its nuclear ambitions and is a ruse to buy time and avert the threat of more punitive measures.
A senior US official was dismissive of the remarks attributed to Jalili, a leading nuclear hardliner, saying there was "not a hint of substance" in them.
The official said he believed the comments were "timed to split the P-5 (powers) by giving China and Russia reason to break ranks on Iran sanctions." Moscow and Beijing, major trade partners of Iran, have long opposed harsh sanctions.
Iran has repeatedly rejected demands to halt uranium enrichment, which can have both military or civilian purposes, or even freeze it at current levels of output.
US President Barack Obama gave Iran until later this month to take up a six-power offer of talks on trade benefits if it shelves nuclear fuel production, or face wider sanctions that could target Iran's vulnerable gasoline sector.
The content of Tehran's proposal and the extent to which it addressed the six powers' concerns, was not immediately clear.
"We've seen the reports, though we have not heard anything conclusively from the Iranians on that," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. Of Obama's offer of talks, he said: "It's still out there, it is still waiting for a response."
Asked about the report of Iran's readiness for talks, a Western diplomat told Reuters in Vienna: "If it is confirmed ... it would of course be very welcome." But a German Foreign Ministry spokesman said it had not yet been contacted by Iran: "For us, the situation hasn't changed."
Germany will host talks on Iran's nuclear programme this week with the United States, China, France, Britain and Russia.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking at a joint news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, said on Monday Iran should realise how "very serious" the Obama deadline was.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi condemned those remarks and said sanctions would not work.
"Their interfering comments show that they do not have any realistic or correct understanding about developments in Iran and are a clear interference in other country's internal affairs," the official news agency IRNA quoted him as saying.
An International Atomic Energy Agency report last week said Iran had again ignored U.N. Security Council demands it stop enriching uranium and open up to IAEA investigators "to exclude the possibility of military dimensions" to its nuclear activity.
Reuters