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Visiting Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said in Paris Tuesday he expected "significant" headway at a meeting between Iranian and European negotiators set on April 29 over Iran's nuclear issue.
"I think we have made positive steps. Iran has proposed a global plan to settle this issue," Khatami said at a press conference after talks with French President Jacques Chirac.
"I hope that during the next meeting on April 29, thanks to French support but also to the reception given to this global plan, we will be able to make even more significant headway ... We are today closer to a solution than some time ago."
According to Chirac's spokesman Jerome Bonnafont, Chirac reaffirmed the Europeans' will to find by dialogue a solution based on peaceful use of the Iranian nuclear program.
"The meeting scheduled for April 29 was mentioned" by the two presidents as "next step of this dialogue," the spokesman said, adding that the foreign ministers of the two countries, Michel Barnier and Kamal Kharrazi attended the talks.
France, Great Britain and Germany are engaged in the diplomatic negotiations in order to obtain Iran's guarantee to give up its effort for nuclear weapons.
In November 2004, after signing the "agreement of Paris", Iran agreed to suspend all activities related to uranium enrichment but refused to abandon them completely.
In an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro on Tuesday, Khatami said that his country could not agree to give up the peaceful use of atomic power and retained the right to resume "nuclear activities."
"We are ready to consider any reasonable solution, but we reject the definitive suspension of our activities," he said. "If there is a bid to pressurize us into giving up peaceful nuclear power, that would be unacceptable for us," he added.
(Xinhua News Agency April 6, 2005)
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