TEHERAN - PRESIDENT Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has struck a more moderate tone towards the United States ahead of a key meeting on Iran's nuclear drive, saying talks with its arch-enemy were possible in the future.

'It is possible that in the near future talks in different fields will take place with the United States,' the state news agency IRNA quoted Mr Ahmadinejad as saying in an interview with state television late on Monday.

Washington broke off relations with Teheran in 1980 in the wake of the Islamic revolution, and ties have remained severed ever since amid increasing acrimony over the controversial Iranian nuclear programme.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana - who presented the offer to Iran last month - is due to hold his latest talks on the package with Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Geneva on Saturday.

Mr Ahmadinejad said that in the next months 'certain things will happen' and insisted that no power in the world could afford to ignore Iran.

'Whichever party is elected in the United States will have to take note of this. In this regard we have received many messages,' he said, referring to the US presidential election in November.

'However these talks will not be at government level but are likely to take place at other levels.

'If the United States wants talks with Iran in fair conditions we welcome that. Nobody, so far, has rejected that.' Official diplomatic contact between Iran and the United States has been almost non-existent over the past three decades, although last year the two foes held three rounds of talks over Iraq.

Mr Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders have repeatedly vowed that Teheran will never suspend enrichment as demanded by world powers, which fear Iran could use the process to make a nuclear weapon.

But media reports say world powers have offered to start pre-negotiations over a six-week period during which Teheran would add no more uranium-enriching centrifuges and in return no further sanctions would be imposed.

In an apparent reference to this proposal, Mr Ahmadinejad said Mr Jalili and Mr Solana will this week discuss a 'timetable' for future negotiations to break the deadlock in the atomic crisis.

'In these talks (between Mr Jalili and Mr Solana) the framework of talks and timetable of talks' will be discussed, Mr Ahmadinejad said in the interview.

Pressed about the length of the timetable, Mr Ahmadinejad said it did not matter whether it lasted for four weeks, six weeks or eight weeks, without giving further details.

The renewed diplomatic efforts come after Iran last week intensified tensions in the nuclear standoff by staging two days of missile tests, which included the firing of a missile that it says can reach Israel.

The United States and its regional ally Israel have never ruled out a military attack to end Iran's controversial nuclear work, which Teheran insists is entirely peaceful.

But Iran's deputy defence minister said that the missile tests would give it a stronger position in negotiations with world powers.

'Because of the manoeuvres, the Islamic Republic will come to the negotiation table with a full hand,' the website of state-run English channel Press-TV quoted Nasrallah Ezzati as saying.

Iran's defiant refusal to suspend enrichment has seen it hit by three sets of UN Security Council sanctions as well as unilateral US and European measures against its financial system. -- AFP