Iran nuclear talks end without progress

World powers and Iran have ended their two-day meeting on Tehran's nuclear programme in the Kazakh city
of Almaty, a Western official said, giving no details about the outcome.

"Talks have concluded," the official said on Wednesday. Another round of talks would be held in the Turkish city of Istanbul but no date was given.

The talks have brought together Iran and five permanent members of the UN Security Council as well as Germany - known as P5+1.

Both sides were due to respond to offers they presented in a final day of talks aimed at breaking a decade of deadlock over Tehran's nuclear drive.

The first day of gruelling negotiations in a luxury hotel in Kazakhstan's commercial capital Almaty concluded on Tuesday with both sides relieved to have pushed the talks along for another day.

They swapped offers that could ease some sanctions on Iran in exchange for concessions on its disputed nuclear programme. The proposals had been discussed in various forms at three previous meetings in the past year.

The big power's official spokesman measured his words carefully as he laid out what the world expected Iran to do next to convince nations it was not in hot pursuit of a nuclear bomb.

"We hope very much that the Iranian side comes back [on Wednesday] showing flexibility and a willingness to negotiate," added the spokesman for EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton.

"The ball is very much in their court," Michael Mann stressed.

On the table is an offer for the five Security Council members and Germany to ease sanctions on Iran's gold and precious metals trade while simultaneously lifting some restrictions on the Islamic republic's banking operations.

The measures are meant to introduce goodwill in Tehran while encouraging it to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent - a level seen as being within striking distance of military capabilities.

The powers also want Iran to shut the Fordo plant where such high-grade material is produced and to ship out the existing stock it does not need for established medical purposes.

ran counters that its rights to enrich uranium - entrusted to every nation but stripped from Iran due to its failure to cooperate with nuclear inspectors - must be respected before negotiations can proceed any further.

Tehran has also stipulated that it would only consider giving up enrichment to 20 per cent if all forms of sanctions against it were lifted - a condition Washington rejects.

"We will not accept anything beyond our obligations and will not accept anything less than our rights," Saeed Jalili, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, declared before setting off for Kazakhstan.

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, countered on a visit to Berlin on Tuesday that he hoped "Iran itself will make its choice to move down the path of a diplomatic solution".

Few expect Wednesday's meeting to conclude with anything beyond promises to hold more discussions at various levels.

But proponents of this approach argue that such painstaking negotiations avert much more serious dangers.

"It's clear that no one expects everyone to walk out of here in Almaty with a done deal. This is a negotiating process," Ashton's spokesman Mann said.