Iran needs until August for nuke answer: Paper

Zurich, Jul 9: Iran will not give a final reply to a proposal from major world powers aimed at defusing a standoff over its nuclear programme before August, the country's ambassador to Switzerland was quoted as saying.

''President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced a final answer from our side for August. We need that time to assess the proposal without reservations,'' the country's ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi told SonntagsBlick in an interview posted on the newspaper's Web site yesterday.

Ravanchi's words reinforce the view Iranian officials will give no final reply to the package of technology, trade and other incentives made by Western countries in exchange for halting uranium enrichment when they meet European Union counterparts next week.

Iranian officials have already indicated there will be no full answer before August, but the EU said on Friday it expected a ''substantial response'' from Iran at the talks, after what the bloc called a ''constructive'' initial meeting.

Ali Larijani, Iran's chief negotiator in the dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme, yesterday met Switzerland's Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey for bilateral talks, but no further details were given.

''We do not accept preconditions. The discussions must be open.

All questions or ambivalences should be solved by negotiations. We don't understand why people are drawing lines there,'' Larijani said on Swiss television.

Switzerland has represented U.S. interests in Iran since 1980, after diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran were severed following the Islamic revolution.

REUTERS