EU agrees on Iran sanctions but open to new talks

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union agreed on Monday to implement UN sanctions on Iran while holding a door open to fresh talks on defusing a standoff over what Western powers suspect is a covert Iranian bid to make atom bombs.

Officials said the sanctions would strictly follow measures listed in a UN resolution in December, aimed at forcing Iran to suspend efforts to make nuclear fuel, a program Tehran says is meant only to generate electricity.

Diplomats said the EU measures would include travel bans on Iranian nuclear officials, a call on states to prevent Iranian nationals from studying sensitive technologies on their soil, while leaving open the possibility of further action.

However European countries, some enjoying major trade ties with Iran, continue to resist American appeals for them to join a U.S.-led financial embargo of Iran.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who re-established tentative contacts with Iran at a security conference in Germany on Sunday, also said fresh talks with Tehran were possible.

"We want to maintain dialogue and Iran knows what we want to do," he told reporters as he arrived for a session of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

He said a meeting with chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani on Sunday on the margins of a conference in Munich had been "good and constructive" but gave no details.

"Now what we have to do is to look at the proposal that the Iranians are presenting," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. EU officials decline to describe the proposal.

Diplomats at the Munich meeting said a few European nations were weighing the idea of letting Iran run a few hundred nuclear centrifuges for research but without feeding uranium into them to generate fuel. Meanwhile, trade incentives offered by the West last year to stop uranium enrichment would be negotiated.

But while Iran might be amenable, diplomats said, the United States, Britain and France were likely to object over concern Tehran would gain nuclear skills merely by vacuum-testing centrifuges, which can yield fuel for power plants or bombs.

FRANCE REJECTS IDEA

"An Iranian commitment simply to not introduce material into centrifuges as they kept spinning would not meet the demands of the UN Security Council in any way," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told a news conference.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledged on Sunday to pursue Iran's nuclear agenda but also said Tehran was ready for new talks, put on hold last year as Iran pressed ahead with its nuclear program in defiance of international calls.

Those talks collapsed after Larijani hinted to Solana Iran could consider a two-month suspension while incentives talks went on, only to withdraw the proposal after apparently having his wings clipped by Tehran hard-liners, EU diplomats said then.

But some analysts say Iran may be more ready for a deal now after moderates, accusing Ahmadinejad of a confrontational course that provoked sanctions and could isolate Iran abroad, battered Ahmadinejad's hard-line allies in recent elections.

"Iran considers that all the issues, within the framework of negotiations, can be presented and examined, even suspension," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said on Monday.

Of current proposals, he said: "If it assures or guarantees Iran's right to use nuclear energy, it can be considered."

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei has urged Iran and the West to adopt a "timeout," with mutual suspensions of enrichment and sanctions steps, to revive talks and avert a spiral toward a feared U.S.-Iran war.

Ahmadinejad rejected on Monday U.S. suspicions that Iran was supplying sophisticated weapons to Iraqi militants, telling U.S. television network ABC: "The U.S. administration and (U.S. President George W.) Bush are used to accusing others."

The UN sanctions ban transfers of sensitive nuclear materials to Iran, freeze financial assets of those linked with the nuclear project and ask countries to pass on information for those on the list about when they travel abroad and where.

"The EU text transcribes the UN sanctions one-on-one in a very strict and stringent manner," one EU diplomat said.

"But the text leaves the possibility (to go further) in the future," the envoy added. Diplomats said the package still had to be perused by lawyers and translated before it became formalized, which could take another week.

Washington has accused the EU of dragging its feet on carrying out the sanctions and urged it to follow it with measures such as banning business with Iran's Bank Sepah.

(additional reporting by Edmund Blair in Tehran and Mark Heinrich in Brussels)

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