Iran Ready to Continue EU Nuclear Talks

Paul Hughes, Reuters:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday he had new ideas to resolve its nuclear standoff with the West and was ready to continue talks with the European Union, local media reported.

But with his country facing possible referral to the U.N. Security Council and in his first substantive nuclear comments since taking office last week, Ahmadinejad described the EU's latest proposal to resolve the issue as insulting. READ MORE

And he said Iran had done nothing unlawful by resuming uranium conversion at a nuclear facility near Isfahan on Monday, a move European Union officials have warned could see it referred to the U.N. Security Council for punitive action.

"We are ready for talks, and negotiations have never been interrupted by us," Ahmadinejad said in a telephone conversation with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the official IRNA news agency said.

"Of course, I will put forward initiatives in this respect after forming my cabinet," he added, IRNA said, without elaborating.

EU diplomats have voiced concern that Ahmadinejad, a religious conservative, will adopt a tougher stance on Iran's nuclear program than the former reformist government of Mohammad Khatami.

Officials say he has already chosen to replace chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani, a pragmatic cleric respected by his EU counterparts, with Ali Larijani, a more hardline official who used to run Iran's state broadcasting network.

"INSULT TO IRANIAN NATION"

Iran on Saturday rejected an EU package of political and economic incentives aimed at persuading Iran to give up nuclear fuel work for good.

Ahmadinejad told Annan the EU proposal was "an insult to the Iranian nation."

"They have talked to us ... as if the Iranian nation was suffering from backwardness and the time was 100 years ago and our country was their colony," he said.

He added that Iran had every right to resume uranium conversion -- frozen along with all nuclear fuel work under an agreement with the EU hammered out in Paris last November.

"It is our national right to have such technology and nothing unlawful or unilateral has taken place," IRNA reported him as saying.

According to IRNA, Annan urged Iran to exercise restraint in its nuclear activities and said he was concerned about the deadlock in the Iran-EU negotiations.