AFP - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday Tehran will offer a new package to world powers for negotiations aimed at resolving the standoff over its controversial nuclear drive.
   
"We are preparing a new package which will be ready very soon," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the southern province of Kerman, according to the official IRNA news agency.
   
The Fars news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying the package "will be presented to the P5-plus-1 group," referring to UN Security Council permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany.
   
"Iran will hold discussions based on this new package which guarantees peace and justice in the world," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.
   
He said the package was a new version of one offered in May 2008, which Iran described as an all-embracing attempt to solve the world's problems, and which suggested setting up consortiums -- including one in Iran -- to enrich uranium and manufacture nuclear fuel.
   
The 2008 package was offered after global powers proposed economic incentives to help Iran's civilian nuclear programme in return for a halt to enrichment activities.
   
Uranium enrichment is a process which makes nuclear fuel as well as the core of an atom bomb, and the West fears Iran is secretly trying to build nuclear weapons -- a charge persistently denied by Tehran.
   
Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said on Monday that Tehran was ready to talk with the P5-plus-1 to resolve the long-running deadlock.
   
His remarks came after the six nations decided to invite Iran for talks, a result of several overtures from US President Barack Obama's administration towards Tehran.
   
Iranian officials have insisted the world must accept Iran as a nuclear power, especially after Ahmadinejad opened a nuclear fuel production plant -- a development indicating that Tehran has mastered the complete fuel cycle.
   
The president last Thursday cut the ribbon at a fuel facility in Isfahan, which the Mehr news agency said can produce 10 tonnes of nuclear fuel annually to feed the heavy water 40-megawatt Arak reactor and can provide 30 tonnes for light water reactors such as the Bushehr nuclear plant.
   
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that US and European diplomats could scrap their demand that Iran cease enriching uranium at the start of talks with the six nations, which would mark a sharp shift in policy.
   
But the report was dismissed by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs as not "accurate."
   
The US administration of former president George W. Bush had insisted that Iran mothball its enrichment programme before talks begin.
   
And France insisted on Wednesday that Iran must suspend uranium enrichment during any talks with the international community. The UN Security Council has imposed three sets of sanctions on Tehran over its defiance.
   
French foreign ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said France stood by a 2007 proposal by the six world powers.
   
They had suggested that if Tehran halted all nuclear activity beyond its civilian site in the Gulf port city of Bushehr, including all uranium enrichment, they would in return not seek new UN economic sanctions.
   
During the limited period of this so-called "double freeze", Tehran and the six nations could begin substantial negotiations, Nadal said.
   
Tehran has rejected such a proposal, arguing it has a legitimate right to run a civil nuclear programme -- including the enrichment of uranium -- under international law.
   
If world powers allow Tehran to enrich uranium during the period of new talks, it would likely provoke outcry in Israel, which says Iran is trying to prevaricate while it continues to build a nuclear weapon.
   
OPEC-member Iran insists its nuclear drive is aimed solely at generating energy for a growing population and to prepare for when fossil fuels run out.