Leading international powers may reach an agreement within weeks on a third UN resolution imposing sanctions on Iran because of its nuclear program, a French diplomat said after talks in Paris on Saturday.
While Saturday's closed-door talks produced no firm decision, the official said a compromise text on a new resolution would be circulated among the six countries involved -- the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany -- next week.
"There are elements that allow us to think we will have a resolution in the short term," the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.
He said he was "relatively optimistic" about having a resolution in the next few weeks.
Clamor for new sanctions -- led by the US, Britain and France -- mounted after Friday's collapse of an 18-month EU effort to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment.
Russia and China, the other two veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council, have been more reluctant regarding a third set of sanctions.
Russian and US officials declined comment after Saturday's talks. The chief US participant, US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, left France immediately afterward. The Russian official scheduled to attend, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak, was stuck in Canada because of snow and a colleague attended in his place.
The French diplomat insisted that there were no "deep differences" among the countries at Saturday's talks and said the new Chinese negotiator had been more cooperative than his predecessor.
He would not give details of the proposed third resolution, except to say it would be "along the same logic" as the first two.
Iran increased enrichment activities following the previous two sets of UN sanctions. The country maintains its nuclear program is exclusively aimed at generating electricity. Western powers fear it could be used to build weapons.
The French official insisted the goal was to bring the Iranians to the negotiating table -- not lead to a "global confrontation" with Iran.
He said, however, that "all the efforts to open negotiations are going nowhere."
The diplomat said Friday's meeting in London between EU envoy Javier Solana and Saeed Jalili, Iran's senior nuclear negotiator, was a "disaster."
That meeting had been considered a last chance for Iran to give in to UN pressure and freeze its enrichment program before a EU report on Iran's nuclear program that will be used in the discussion of new sanctions.
The Iranian negotiator said on Saturday that he would go to Moscow next week. In comments carried on Iran's state-run IRNA news agency, Jalili dismissed concerns about the collapse of the EU negotiation effort and about Solana's upcoming report on the issue.
"We expect the international community to adopt a positive stand on Iran's cooperation with" the International Atomic Energy Agency, Jalili said in Tehran.
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