EU's Solana in new nuclear proposal for Iran

BRUSSELS (AFP) — EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said Monday that he hopes to travel to Iran soon to present a new nuclear offer from major world powers, after meeting Tehran's foreign minister over the weekend.

"I still don't have a date but it will be soon I hope. I met Mottaki (minister) in Lebanon yesterday," he told reporters as he arrived for a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

"We have a new proposal. I would like very much to present it to them," Solana said.

In an effort to persuade Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, permanent Security Council members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany have re-worked an offer of incentives originally made in 2006.

However Iran insists it has the right to enrich uranium to make nuclear fuel to help meet its electricity needs and has so far defied Security Council resolutions which demand it halt the process.

At highly refined levels, such work can also make the fissile core of an atomic bomb but Iran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful and has vehemently denied that it is seeking to make weapons with it.

Solana has been struggling to establish high-level talks aimed at getting Iran to accept the political and trade incentives, but Tehran refuses to suspend enrichment as a precondition for negotiating.