Iran is ready to limit its nuclear programme but will not suspend uranium enrichment as a precondition for talks, a media report said on Monday.
Once talks develop, a majority in Iran's leadership would accept a compromise over the nuclear programme that allows it to keep some uranium enrichment in Iran, Financial Times said, quoting regime sources.
"Around 70 percent of senior people may be prepeared, under pressure, to accept an eventual limit on the number of centrifuges (for enriching uranium) to hundreds or thousands," the sources told the daily. "The West's package accepts Iran's right to nuclear energy - so the next step is that the West accepts enrichment and drops the big fuss."
Tehran is set to make a counterproposal within two weeks in response to a package of incentives, including light-water reactors and trade concessions, offered to Iran earlier this month by the five permanent mebers of the UN security council and Germany, the report said.
The sources told the daily Iran will offer talks without preconditions and said Tehran could not suspend enrichment because of domestic politics and also because it did not feel under enough international pressure to act.
"The situation remains very delicate. The package (offered by the West) was weak and Ayatollah Khamenei found it disappointing," the sources told the Financial Times. They, however, claimed that tension was being eased by indirect contact with Washington through Saudi Arabia.
