Mousavian has taken a hard line on the issue of uranium enrichment. "Cessation is rejected, indefinite suspension is rejected," he was quoted by the AFP as saying in Tehran on Tuesday. "Suspension shall be a confidence-building measure and a voluntary decision by Iran and in no way a legal obligation."
To avoid a diplomatic showdown and salvage last year's agreement, the Europeans proposed a package of economic incentives for Iran last month that included access to imported nuclear fuel for its reactors, help with regional security concerns and increased trade, including access to spare parts for Iran's aging airline industry.
That incentive strategy was underscored in the EU decision contained in the statement on Friday.
"A full and sustained suspension of all enrichment and reprocessing activities, on a voluntary basis, would open the door for talks on long-term cooperation offering mutual benefits," the statement said.
The European leaders also pledged to press for long-term "political, economic and technological" cooperation and the resumption of negotiations on a trade agreement between Iran and the EU.
In Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Iran's supreme leader, took the unusual step of delivering the weekly Friday prayer sermon, insisting that Iran had no intention of developing nuclear weapons, which, he said, were forbidden under Islam.
"They accuse us of pursuing nuclear weapons," Khamenei said. "I am telling them as I have said before that we are not even thinking about nuclear weapons. Our nuclear weapon is our young and devoted youth and our believing nation."
In an interview published Friday in the San Francisco Chronicle, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the IAEA, said that he had no clear proof that Iran was developing nuclear weapons.
"We haven't seen any concrete evidence that points to a fact that Iran has a nuclear weapons program," he said. "We have seen Iran experimenting with all aspects of the fuel cycle, but we still have lots of work to do."
But the US, Britain, France, Germany and other countries believe that despite its denials, Iran is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program under cover of its civilian atomic energy program.
Even China has become involved in trying to resolve the nuclear impasse with Iran. Before heading for Tehran on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing spoke with Secretary of State Colin Powell about how to "properly resolve the nuclear issue of Iran" within the IAEA framework, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Russia, meanwhile, which has been building a nuclear power reactor in the Iranian port city of Bushehr for more than a decade, Friday reiterated its opposition to a move against Iran in the Security Council.
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