BRUSSELS, Dec 7: Russia called on Friday for continuing six power negotiations on Iran’s disputed nuclear programme, showing no resistance to US and Nato calls for tougher UN sanctions.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov appeared conciliatory after Moscow, along with China, had suggested that new US intelligence undermined Washington’s case for a third round of sanctions.

“We hope very much the negotiations with Iran will continue,” he told a press conference during a meeting of Nato foreign ministers who have pushed for continued talks aimed at imposing tougher UN sanctions against Iran.

“It is a two-track process helping IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and working through the sextet and we believe that all these efforts should have an impact on the situation,” he said.

But he carefully dodged calls at Nato, led by the United States, for more sanctions.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after a bilateral meeting with Lavrov, vowed to pursue the sanctions and keep pressure on the Islamic republic to suspend uranium enrichment.

“We’re going to continue on the UN Security Council track,” she said, after her first talks with Lavrov since a US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) published Monday indicated Iran shelved work on an atomic bomb in 2003.

Rice said the 26 Nato nations had “talked again about the UN Security Council track, the need to use that track to try to stimulate the Iranian regime to take the negotiating track that is available to them.” “We are going to continue our work on the security council resolution, indeed our political level officials are going to meet sometime this week,” she said.

“We very much hope that Iran will choose to suspend its enrichment and reprocessing activities,” Rice said.

Iran is already labouring under two sets of sanctions over its nuclear programme, which Tehran says is for civilian purposes but Western powers believe may be screening efforts to build an atomic bomb.

But the intelligence assessment indicated that Iran might have given up its nuclear weapons programme four years ago.

The report also said that this halt was probably due to international pressure, including sanctions and a package of economic and political incentives being offered to Iran to suspend uranium enrichment.

Enrichment is a process used to fuel an atomic reactor, but at highly refined levels it can be used to build a bomb.

A senior US government official said he was impressed how “European opinion has settled down and solidified” after a “48-hour period of nervous reaction”to the intelligence reports.—AFP