WASHINGTON, May 10: The United States said on Wednesday that its European allies were working on a new proposal that would allow Iran to keep its civil nuclear programme.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who disclosed the new offer while talking to reporters, said the western powers had also agreed to wait ‘a couple of weeks’ before pressing tough UN sanctions against Iran.

Ms Rice spoke after two days of intensive consultations with Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany on devising a common strategy to prevent Iran from making a nuclear bomb.

“We agreed that we will continue to seek a Security Council resolution, but that we would wait for a couple of weeks while the Europeans design an offer to the Iranians,” she told ABC television. “(The offer) would make clear that they have a choice that would allow them to have a civil nuclear program if that is, indeed, what they want.”

In a separate interview to NBC television, she said the new initiative would give a clear option to Iran, which can “either defy the international community and face isolation and UN Security Council action; or Iran can accept a path to a civil nuclear program that is acceptable to the international community.”

Asked if there will be guarantees in the offer to prevent Iran from enriching uranium, Ms Rice said: “There has to be a civil nuclear program that cannot lead to the technologies that lead to a bomb. That means that enrichment and reprocessing on their territory can’t be permitted.”

In her interviews, Ms Rice also explained why Washington would not respond to a letter Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent to President Bush earlier this week. “It’s not a serious diplomatic overture … it really was a kind of philosophical and indeed religious attack on US policies,” she said. “There was nothing in it that suggested a way out of the nuclear stalemate.”