Israel unhappy with Iran-West talks: Ahmadinejad

TEHRAN, Iran — American proposals for direct talks with Iran are pointless while Washington is “holding a gun” to the country through sanctions, Iran’s supreme leader said Thursday, quashing a possible breakthrough in contacts with the West over the nuclear standoff. The message from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all major decisions in Iran, was reiterated by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a news conference in Cairo later in the day.

A defiant President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that Iran will itself enrich uranium up to 20 percent purity in a blow to Western efforts to stop Tehran's sensitive nuclear activities.Ahmadinejad also said that even the Islamic republic's arch-foe Israel would be unable to do a "damn thing" about Iran's nuclear programme.He reiterated that as far as Tehran is concerned, the nuclear issue is "over" and said the Islamic republic will "not back down from its rights."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry insisted on Tuesday there was a "diplomatic path" to be forged with Iran on its disputed nuclear programme, as world powers and Tehran held crunch talks. "There is a diplomatic path," said Kerry after meeting his German counterpart Guido Westerwelle in Berlin.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected Thursday a US offer to negotiate one-on-one on Tehran's disputed nuclear programme so long as Washington continues to impose sanctions on Iran.

VIENNA, Austria — Senior UN investigators trying for more than a year to restart a probe into Iran’s alleged work on nuclear arms chose their words carefully Tuesday about hopes for success as they left for Tehran on a trip that sets the stage for separate talks between six world powers and the Islamic Republic. Iran insists it has never tried to develop nuclear arms — an assertion underlined by the Foreign Ministry in Tehran as the UN team of International Atomic Energy Agency experts prepared to board the flight bound for the Iranian capital.

Iran's oil exports have been slashed 40 percent in the past nine months because of tough Western sanctions, Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi was quoted as saying on Monday, in a reversal of his previous denials of any decline at all.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday that Tehran is "ready for a dialogue" with the world powers on the nuclear issue and hopes that future meetings will yield results."The best solution is cooperation," Ahmadinejad insisted in an interview on state television. "We hope that in future meetings (with world powers) if they occur, we get faster results."He criticised the West's muted reaction to the letter sent by Iran in early May to European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton proposing resumption of talks over Tehran's nuclear issue.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday that Iran will hold off talks with the world powers on Tehran's nuclear programme until the end of August as a way to "discipline" the West.The hardline leader said at a Tehran news conference that Iran would also seek the inclusion of Brazil and Turkey in the nuclear fuel swap negotiations with the United States, France and Russia.When asked about when Tehran would talk with world powers over its nuclear programme, Ahmadinejad said the "negotiations (would likely occur) after the middle of Ramadan," around the end of August.