Iran Taking Nuclear Offer 'seriously'

Iran is taking "very seriously" an international offer of incentives to end its nuclear programme, the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, said today after meeting the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki.

"They are considering the package very, very seriously," Mr Annan told a news conference in Geneva after the meeting, but added that a response from Iran was unlikely before the G8 meeting in St Petersburg on July 15-17.

"I expect their answer to come after that meeting, but I can't tell you specifically on what date," he said. The incentive package, agreed at the start of this month by the five permanent members of the UN security council - the United States, Britain, France China and Russia - and Germany, offers support for civilian nuclear work along with trade benefits such as the sale of US aircraft parts in return for an end to uranium enrichment.

Tehran has given the deal a mixed reception, saying it wants time to study it.

Yesterday, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said there would be no response until mid-August, a timetable George Bush immediately dismissed as too slow, saying he was thinking of "weeks not months".

"It shouldn't take the Iranians that long to analyse what's a reasonable deal," the US president said.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, did not appear to share Mr Annan's optimism, telling The Guardian today that he believed that the nuclear issue was a smokescreen for Washington to topple the regime in Tehran.

"The nuclear issue is just a pretext," said Mr Larijani. "If it was not the nuclear matter, they would have come up with something else."

US and German officials have said they would like a response around the time of a G8 foreign ministers' meeting in Moscow on June 29, a precursor to the St Petersburg summit.

The US and its partners may still seek a UN Security Council resolution against Iran if they find the response unacceptable.

Mr Annan said his talk with the Iranian foreign minister was "very useful", and that he had urged Iran to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"Iran maintains that its interest in nuclear energy is purely for peaceful purposes, and I have stressed to Iranian leaders, including Mr Mottaki, that it is very much in their interest to convince the world of that by cooperating fully with IAEA," Mr Annan said.

He said that Tehran was willing to negotiate without precondition, and that "everything can be discussed at the table, and that I presume includes the question of enrichment".

Iran insists that its intentions are only peaceful. However, uranium enrichment can be used to produce materials for nuclear weapons as well as fuel for civil reactors.