Iran ‘ready for nuclear talks’

Iran will be ready to resume nuclear talks with world powers as soon as the country’s president-elect puts together his negotiating team, the foreign minister has said.

Ali Akbar Salehi was speaking after a meeting in Brussels with members of the six-member group that reopened talks with Iran last year.

The group of six is made up of the five permanent UN Security Council nations – the US, the UK, Russia, China and France -plus Germany.

The EU’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the group wants to quickly resume negotiations, which have failed so far to make significant headway. No date has been proposed.

Iran’s new president, Hasan Rouhani, himself a former senior nuclear negotiator, is piecing together his government and will be sworn in early next month.

The West fears Tehran may be seeking to develop a nuclear weapon, a charge the government denies.