U.S. says Iran will get incentives "very quickly"

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - World powers very soon will present Iran with a revised package of incentives to give up its sensitive nuclear work, U.S. officials said on Monday, but expectations for a positive response are low.

"I think this will move very quickly," said a senior U.S. official, when asked when the incentives package agreed on by major powers in London last Friday would be formally offered to the Iranians.

Top government officials in China, Russia, the United States, France, Britain -- the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- and Germany are now reviewing the decision made in London and an approach would be made soon to Tehran, the official said. France has said it could be within days.

The incentives are based on an offer first made to Iran in June 2006, which diplomats say has been "refreshed" to include enhanced nuclear cooperation but do not differ substantially from the first one.

"It is not a major step forward, frankly, because we think it was a very good offer in the first place. We simply don't understand why the Iranians have not put more interest in it," the senior U.S. official told Reuters.

"It doesn't augur well for a reaction, given what they have said already," he added, anticipating Iran's formal response.

Iran said on Monday it would not consider any incentives that violated its right to nuclear technology, ruling out a precondition to halt atomic work the West believes is aimed at making bombs. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful power purposes.

"It is nice to see, I guess, that they are keeping such an open mind about this by rejecting it before they have even seen it," said State Department spokesman Tom Casey when asked about Iran's comments.

DIFFERENCES

The incentives offered in 2006 included civil nuclear cooperation and wider trade in civil aircraft, energy, high technology and agriculture, if Tehran suspended enrichment and negotiated with the six powers, including the United States.

"What the offer does is that it underlines that we (the United States) are interested in having a relationship with these guys (Iran)," said the U.S. official.

He said Russia and China, which are reluctant to impose further punitive measures on Iran, had pushed for "troublesome" additions to the package but these were not included.

"They were looking at a definitively different offer ... They wanted more political facilitation and they wanted more flexibility on certain aspects of nuclear cooperation," the official said, while declining to provide further details.

Casey and other U.S. officials said if Iran continued to turn down the offer, it faced more international pressure in the form of sanctions and other punitive measures.

"It is a hard slog but we will continue upping the pressure and we have been fairly successful upping the pressure ... The United States is always looking at tougher sanctions on Iran," said the senior official.