Austria: United Nations deadline for Iran, asking it to stop uranium enrichment or face further economic sanctions ended on Wednesday.
Iran said that it will not suspend uranium enrichment with a UN Security Council deadline looming, but called for negotiations to resolve the long-running dispute over its nuclear activities.
The UN Security Council in a December resolution placed limited sanctions on Iran and set a 60-day deadline that arrives Wednesday demanding Tehran stop enriching uranium, a process that could aid the production of nuclear weapons.
Iran's chief negotiator, Ali Larijani, said at a meeting with the top UN nuclear inspector, Mohammed ElBaradei, that his country is willing to provide assurances that uranium enrichment will only be used to generate energy - not atomic weapons.
"Iran will not suspend the process as a condition for negotiations," Larijani said. The problem "can be solved at the negotiating table," he said after meeting with ElBaradei at the International Atomic Energy (IAEA) headquarters in Vienna.
The UN Security Council will consider fresh sanctions on Iran if it fails to comply.
Iran says its program is purely peaceful
Iran denies allegations by the United States and some of its European partners that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons technology. The United States has hinted at seeking more UN sanctions if Iran does not comply with the Security Council resolution.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended his country's right to enrich uranium and insisted he will not allow the issue to become a condition for talks.
"We are against tensions and confrontations and in favour of logic. Therefore we would welcome negotiations to settle the issue," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in Rasht, capital of the northern Caspian Sea province of Gilan.
"We would give the necessary assurances and guarantees that there will be no deviation ever toward nuclear weapons," Larijani told reporters, without specifying what the guarantees would be.
"If the other side expresses concerns about possible deviations of Iran's activities in the future, we have no objections to settling these concerns at the negotiating table," he said after meeting ElBaradei.
ElBaradei is expected to report to the UN Security Council on Wednesday that
Tehran has defied a 60-day deadline to suspend enrichment, as demanded in a December 23 resolution that also banned transfers of technology and know-how to Iran's atomic program.
With inputs from CNN.com
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