WASHINGTON, May 25: The White House has urged Iran to suspend uranium enrichment before it considered holding direct talks with Teheran.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said that Iran should suspend uranium enrichment before the United States considered the possibility of direct talks on the Iranian nuclear programme. “When that happens, all right, then there may be some opportunities” for talks, he added.

Mr Snow said the US would not want to divide the coalition of major countries that Washington was working with to force Iran to abandon its nuclear programme by holding direct talks.

The Bush administration has been very careful in responding to Iranian overtures for direct talk on the nuclear issue. The US State Department portrayed Iran’s diplomatic offensive as a diversion, fearing that a show of interest in direct talks might enable Tehran to present the nuclear dispute as US-Iran issue and thus hurt Washington’s efforts to portray it as a major cause of concern for the international community.