Iran still plans reply to nuke incentives deal

The United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia proposed two months ago to give Iran trade and technical concessions if it shelves an uranium enrichment program first.

But Iran was deemed to take too long to respond and was referred to the UN Security Council. The world body promptly passed a resolution ordering Tehran to halt atomic work or face the possible threat of sanctions.

Tehran's Foreign Ministry said this resolution would automatically kill off the package of incentives. But government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said Tehran would still respond.

"We are still ready to answer the proposed package in the time frame we gave, and we will answer," he was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

There are no signs, however, that Iran would engage the offer and allay Western suspicions it seeks to build atom bombs. Iran says it needs atomic fuel solely to run power stations.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani have said Iran will continue to produce nuclear fuel regardless of international calls for it to stop. Larijani even says Iran will expand uranium enrichment.

A Western intelligence official in Europe said Iran was delaying a definitive reply to the offer while it sought to master the technology of running several cascades of interconnected centrifuge enrichment machines at the same time.

Tehran's aim was to put new "facts on the ground" that would strengthen its bargaining power with the West, said the official, who spoke on condition he was not further identified.