EU-Iran strike nuke deal

"Negotiations were very hard and complicated but we reached a preliminary agreement on an expertise level," said Hossein Mousavian, head of Iran's delegation, which ended two days of talks with officials from Britain, Germany and France in Paris Saturday. "All four delegations are supposed to go to their capitals and if the capitals agree with the agreement, it will be officially announced in the next few days," he told state television.

His announcement followed talks between Iran and Britain, France and Germany on getting Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment in order to avoid being hauled before the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions.

Iran was seeking a compromise in the talks with France, Germany and Britain to avoid a dispute over its nuclear program being referred to the United Nations Security Council and avert the risk of sanctions.

The EU trio wants Iran to stop enriching uranium.

"At the end of difficult talks, the two parties made considerable progress toward a provisional agreement on a common approach on these issues," the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

But a source close to the negotiations said: "Nothing is settled ... The discussions were difficult, very difficult. The Iranians struggled hard."

"Everyone has to touch base now," the source added after the second day of talks. "That's the end of this meeting ... There is no (further) meeting planned."

Iran denies US accusations that it is developing nuclear weapons. It says uranium enrichment, a process of purifying uranium for use as fuel in atomic power plants or in weapons, is a sovereign right that it will never abandon.

Its official IRNA news agency said lawmakers had drafted a bill, to go to parliament next week, outlawing the state from developing nuclear weapons in a bid to show the world that Tehran's atomic ambitions were entirely peaceful.

"Parliament intends to make it a law ... that Iran does not need atomic arms, to prove to the world that the US and Israel are lying," lawmaker Hamid Reza Hajbabaei was quoted as saying.

At the talks Tehran was offering a six-month suspension of its enrichment program but Britain, France and Germany wanted it to agree to an indefinite suspension before an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting on Nov. 25, diplomats said.

If no deal is struck before the meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog's board of governors, the EU is expected to support Washington's demand for a referral to the UN Security Council.

China's Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said during a visit to Iran on Saturday that it would be better if the matter were not referred to the Security Council, where Beijing holds the option of vetoing any sanctions against Tehran.

"It would only make the issue more complicated and difficult to work out," he told a news conference.

Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi added: "It is in the interests of both sides that the issue be resolved in a way that Iran retains its legitimate right to use peaceful nuclear technology and others are assured that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons."