Arab League wants Mideast free from nuclear arms

BEIJING, May 30 (Reuters) West Asia should be free of nuclear weapons, the head of the League of Arab States told China's official Xinhua agency today, after Iran said it wanted to resume nuclear negotiations with the European Union.

''(Our) goal ... is to establish a zone free from nuclear weapons in the Middle East,'' Xinhua quoted Secretary-General Amr Mahmoud Moussa as saying in an interview.

''It is not a nuclear issue of Iran but a nuclear issue of the Middle East,'' he said when asked about the Iran nuclear issue after arriving in the Chinese capital for a meeting of the China-Arab Cooperation Forum.

UN Security Council powers and Germany will meet in Vienna on Thursday to finalise a package of incentives for Iran to halt enrichment along with penalties if it keeps defying international pressure, officials have said.

Tehran said today it was willing to negotiate on the number of uranium-enriching centrifuges it uses for research, but stressed it would not stop running the devices entirely as the UN Security Council has called for.

The United States and its allies fear Iran could use even limited enrichment facilities to master the technology required to make atomic weapons.

Tehran says it seeks nuclear energy only for electricity.

At present, security analysts believe that the only nuclear-armed nation in the region is Israel -- an arch-enemy of Tehran, which does not recognise its existence.

Israel refuses to confirm or deny whether it has nuclear weapons, although unlike Iran it is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

REUTERS CH RK2215