GENEVA - MAJOR world powers will sound out Iran's readiness to negotiate an end to the long dispute over its nuclear programme.
The unprecedented participation of a senior United States official in the one-day meeting in Geneva on Saturday, together with Iranian comments playing down the likelihood of an attack by the United States and Israel, have raised hopes of progress.
Signs of easing tension have helped knocked the price of oil off recent record highs, but the optimism was tempered by a US insistence that despite the presence of its envoy William Burns, real negotiations cannot begin until Iran has frozen sensitive nuclear work, a step Teheran has repeatedly ruled out.
'That remains the US position and it will continue to be the US position,' US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a news conference in Washington of the precondition.
Arriving for talks with officials from the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany - the so-called sextet - chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said he had 'positive intentions'.
Mr Jalili has a mandate from Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to take any decision needed, a senior Iranian official said, adding that the meeting 'will clarify the fate of the negotiations'.
Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer, rejects suspicions that it wants the atom bomb, saying the aim of the programme is to generate electricity so that it can export more crude oil and gas. -- REUTERS
