EU leaders said today that Iran is showing "new ambition" to negotiate an end to a nuclear row with the West and the door was open for new talks, but they also agreed to implement UN sanctions to keep pressure on Tehran.
Officials said the sanctions would strictly echo a UN resolution aimed at making Iran suspend efforts to make nuclear fuel, which Tehran says is meant only to generate electricity but the West suspects is a disguised quest for atomic bombs.
Diplomats said the EU measures would include travel bans on Iranian nuclear officials, a call on states to prevent Iranian nationals from studying sensitive technologies on their soil, while leaving open the possibility of further action.
However European countries, some enjoying major trade relations with Iran, continue to resist American appeals for them to join a US-led financial embargo against Tehran.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who restored tentative contacts with Iran at a security conference in Munich on Sunday, said new opportunities had arisen for talks with Tehran.
"We both have the impression that in Iran there is a new ambition to return to the negotiating table," Steinmeier said, referring to meetings he and Solana conducted with Iran's nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani at the weekend.
"In the course of the next few days, we will have to sound out whether they (Iran) can pursue that line," Steinmeier told a Brussels news conference.
"The possibilities are not immense," Solana cautioned, saying no concrete proposals for a deal were aired in Munich.
The core of the dispute is Iran's refusal of a UN demand that it suspend enrichment of uranium for nuclear fuel to create trust for talks. Tehran says to do so would be giving up its main bargaining chip before negotiations began.
Diplomats at the Munich meeting said a few European nations were toying with the idea of letting Iran run a few hundred nuclear centrifuges for research but without feeding uranium into them to generate fuel. Meanwhile, trade incentives offered by the West last year to stop enrichment would be negotiated.