WASHINGTON, Dec 19: The United States has urged its European partners to go slow in improving relations with Iran, a country Washington still sees as its adversary.

After his talks with senior European Union foreign ministers in Washington on Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin Powell told a news briefing at the State Department that the meeting helped narrow their differences on Iran.

“On Iran, we discussed Eruopean Union assurances that its trade and cooperation agreement will be firmly linked to changes in Iran’s destructive policies in a number of areas,” he said.

The United States wants the EU to link its trade talks with Iran to a commitment by Tehran to maintain a dialogue on political and human rights issues.

The semi-annual meeting of the US and EU foreign ministers followed Iran’s trade talks with the United States’ European partners.

The Europeans believe that trade with Iran will hasten the pace of change in the Islamic Republic, but the US wants to change Iranian society through sanctions. Besides trade and economic sanctions, Washington also has declared Iran a state sponsor of terrorism and President Bush calls it a member of the international “axis of evil.”

During his talks with the EU foreign ministers, Powell also expressed concern over alleged Iranian efforts to acquire nuclear technology.

Rejecting Iran’s position that it needs nuclear reactors for power generation, Powell said: “Iran has more than enough fossil fuel to sustain itself for any number of years you care to project into the future.”

Joining Powell at the news conference, Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller said: “We have started trade with Iran on the condition that we open a human rights and political rights dialogue. And as soon as we do not have human rights dialogue, political dialogue, the trade agreement does not exist anymore.”

“We also reviewed a number of other regional concerns, such as the deteriorating situation in Venezuela and the need to find a peaceful, democratic, constitutional and politically viable and electoral solution and to do so with urgency, urgency that is appropriate to the situation,” said Powell. “We discussed Ukraine, where the United States and European Union are concerned about encroachments on press freedoms. And we agreed to keep watching the situation very closely.”

“On Afghanistan, we talked about our mutual efforts to meet Afghanistan’s early and urgent need for humanitarian and reconstruction assistance. We also reviewed the efforts of the Afghan government to restore stability and security to the country,” he said. On the Palestinian issue, Powell told his European partners that the United States would wait until after next month’s Israeli elections before resuming dialogue with the Israelis and the Palestinians.

While seeking assurance from Arabs for peace and stability in the region, the United States has committed itself to creating a Palestinian state by 2004.

“There are elements of the (US) roadmap (for the region) that are received favourably by both sides, and there are elements that there is disagreement,” said Powell.

Moller called on the Palestinians to stop terrorism and urged Israel to cease settlement activity. “The way the settlements are now growing means that you will end up with a Palestinian state looking like a Swiss cheese — a lot of holes,” he said.

“In our talks on the North Korean situation, we shared our deep concern over North Korea’s continuing activities in weapons proliferation and its nuclear weapons programme. North Korea’s Dec 12th statement is of particular concern as a step by North Korea away from its international obligations and a further challenge to the nuclear nonproliferation regime,” said Powell.