Tehran would respond next month and not before to a major-power offer of incentives aimed at convincing it to end its nuclear enrichment activities, Iran's foreign minister said on Thursday.
"Such a response will be in August. I didn't say early August or mid-August," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference.
No response can come before "questions and ambiguities" in the proposal are cleared up, he added.
Iran had previously said it would respond by Aug. 22.
But the Group of Eight industrialized nations told Iran on Thursday to give a "clear and substantive response" next week.
Mottaki, in New York to attend a UN conference on the illicit small arms trade, said Iran's response would be "clear and substantive." However, he added, speaking in Farsi choppily translated into English, "The proposed package contains questions and ambiguities which must be clear."
Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani will meet with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana next week and Mottaki acknowledged the meeting might help resolve some of the ambiguities.
But while a response would be announced "as soon as it is done," the process would not be concluded earlier than next month because various committees were considering different parts of the incentives package and it would all take time, he said.
US Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said he still expected a response following the Solana meeting.
"We expect and hope Laranjani will give us the answer to the offer we made," he said.
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