Iran and EU to meet in effort to plan negotiations

Top negotiators from Iran are to meet representatives of the major powers seeking to halt parts of its nuclear programme for the first time since February, a European Union official said today.

"The principle for the meeting is established," said a European Union official. "It will seek to see whether we can resume negotiations."

No further details for the Wednesday meeting between EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and top Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani were announced.

"It will not be negotiations in themselves," the official said. "We will examine the possibilities of what can be done. We have to meet and talk."

Solana led largely unsuccessful international diplomatic efforts for months to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment before the UN first decided to impose sanctions in December.

He last met with Larijani at a security conference in February in Munich, Germany.

Solana negotiates on behalf of permanent UN Security Council members the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China, as well as Germany.

Relations between both sides dipped further during the stand-off over the seized British sailors and marines early this month.

But hours after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the crew's release, Larijani spoke by telephone with Solana. The two have had several phone contacts since, the official said.

Iran has started feeding small amounts of uranium gas into centrifuges that can enrich it to weapons-grade level and is already running more than 1,300 of the machines, according to an International Atomic Energy Agency document obtained this week by The Associated Press.

The confidential document - a letter to Iranian officials from a senior IAEA staff member - also protests an Iranian decision to prevent agency inspectors to visit the country's heavy water reactor that, when built, will produce plutonium. Enriched uranium and plutonium can both be used for the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

Iran has steadfastly denied it plans to produce nuclear weapons, saying it only wants to generate energy.

Last week, Iran said it had begun operating 3,000 centrifuges at its Natanz facility - nearly 10 times the previously known number.

The US, Britain, France and others criticised the announcement, but experts - and several world powers - expressed scepticism that Iran's claims were true and diplomats in Vienna familiar with the state of the program told the Associated Press news agency they were greatly exaggerated.

The United Nations last month toughened sanctions on Iran over its failure to comply with the demand that it freeze enrichment of uranium.

The 27 EU nations will discuss the issue again at their meeting of foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Monday.

The world powers insist that Tehran must freeze its enrichment work before any talks can begin on a package of economic and other incentives, including assistance for its nuclear power generation programme.