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TEHRAN: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday that Iran still finds it difficult to trust Western powers when it comes to talks, but that he also hopes the nuclear dialogue between the two will continue.
His comments came after the White House warned that US President Barack Obama will not wait for ever for Tehran's response to a UN-drafted deal to supply Iran with nuclear fuel in exchange for its low-enriched uranium (LEU).
Two influential senior Iranian lawmakers opposed the deal on Saturday, raising the possibility that Tehran could turn down the proposed offer.
Ahmadinejad also said Iran's arch-foe Israel is unhappy with the ongoing talks with the world powers over the Islamic republic's overall nuclear programme.
Iran and six world powers are separately engaged in a dialogue over allaying Western suspicions that Tehran's nuclear programme is aimed at making weapons - a charge strongly denied by Iran.
"The best way for you is to respect the Iranian nation and cooperate honestly with this nation," the official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying on Saturday at a function in north-eastern Iran.
Ahmadinejad said Iran approaches the talks with Western powers with a sense of distrust, because of what he called their past "negative record".
"We hope the negotiations continue and evil powers don't indulge in mischief because the Zionist regime and other domineering powers are unhappy with the talks," ISNA news agency quoted him as telling a local television channel in the northeast late on Friday.
"The government, like all Iranian people, looks at the negotiations with no trust, given the negative record of Western powers, but realities make them interact with Iranian people."
Ahmadinejad appeared to return to his traditional anti-West rhetoric after a positive comment on Thursday when he said that "conditions were ready" for nuclear cooperation between Iran and world powers.
Western powers are awaiting a clear response from Tehran over the nuclear fuel deal brokered by UN atomic watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
France has said that under the deal 1,200 kilos of Iranian LEU - enriched at a facility in Natanz in defiance of three sets of UN sanctions - would be shipped abroad for further higher processing and conversion into fuel for a Tehran research reactor.
Western powers are backing the deal as the Tehran reactor is an internationally supervised facility, and the deal aims at removing Tehran's stock of LEU, a major concern in the West which suspects the enriched material could be further refined for use in nuclear weapons.
Israel, which maintains that world powers must keep all options on table to halt Tehran's nuclear drive, including a military strike, has also backed the UN-drafted deal.
The Jewish state is the Middle East's sole - if undeclared - nuclear-armed power.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday called the deal "a positive first step," as it supports efforts "to unite the international community to address the challenge of Iran's attempts to become a nuclear military power."
The IAEA has confirmed that Tehran has given an "initial" response to the deal, but late on Friday IRNA reported that Iran's response was "not an answer" to the deal and that it wanted more talks.
- AFP/sc
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