UNITED NATIONS, Sept 19: French President Jacques Chirac put forward a compromise formula on Tuesday for resolving the standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme without having to impose sanctions on Tehran.

Mr Chirac outlined his plan, designed to avoid a rift between the United States and its partners on the UN Security Council, during a press conference after telling the UN General Assembly that ‘dialogue must prevail’ over the threat of sanctions in the showdown.

Under the proposal, Iran and the six major powers involved in the standoff would agree on ‘an agenda’ for broad negotiations on economic and diplomatic relations between the West and Iran that would represent the first formal contact between Tehran and Washington in 27 years.

“At the opening of the negotiations, as a goodwill gesture, the six would take a decision that until the end of negotiations they would not put a (sanctions) request to the Security Council,” he said.

“The Iranian side would say that during the negotiations, Iran would suspend all its contentious activities,” he said, referring to the uranium enrichment programme, which Washington and others suspect is a cover for developing nuclear weapons.

“This is a solution that I discussed at length this morning with the president of the United States and we are on exactly the same track in this matter,” he said.

Mr Chirac’s proposal amounts to a face-saving initiative to allow Iran to suspend its nuclear activities without seeming to cave in under the threat of sanctions, while Washington would obtain and end to Tehran’s uranium enrichment prior to launching substantive negotiations.

But it is significantly, though subtly, different from the stance taken by President George Bush, who fears Iranian stalling tactics and insisted on Tuesday that Iran ‘verifiably suspend’ its enrichment programme before the start of any negotiations.

After the talks with Mr Chirac, Mr Bush said he would support ongoing dialogue between the Europeans and Iran aimed at getting Tehran to ‘verifiably suspend their enrichment activities — in which case the United States will come to the table’.—AFP