(Xinhua/Agencies)
Updated: 2008-01-16 10:42

The United States is expecting a meeting on the Iran's nuclear program to be held soon and it has been working with other permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany in this regard, the State Department said Tuesday.

US President George W. Bush waves to a crowd as he boards Saudi King Abdullah's vehicle January 15, 2008. [Agencies]

"We have been working on a P5, plus 1 ministerial level meeting. I hope that we can have an announcement for you in a not too distant future on that," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

"There's been a lot of discussion in the press about a possible meeting venue in Berlin. I'll let the host of such a potential meeting speak about it before I do," McCormack said.

The meeting will be held in Berlin, Germany, next week, according to the Financial Times Deutschland.

Tensions are growing between the United States and Iran over Washington's accusations that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons and helping Shiite militias in Iraq that target US troops. Iran denies the charges.

Separately, a senior official from one of the participating countries said that "elements of a new (Security Council) resolution" would be the main topic for the council's five permanent members and Germany.

Still, the meeting was unlikely to produce a breakthrough, considering the differences among council members on how harshly Tehran should be punished.

Both Moscow and Beijing have since put renewed emphasis on negotiating with Tehran to resolve international concerns about its nuclear program and ambitions.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel noted that point Tuesday, saying in Berlin that "negotiations about the next (UN) resolution on sanctions ... slowed down a little bit." But she said the US assessment should not banish concerns about Tehran's nuclear defiance.

Any Security Council action will likely be delayed until the UN nuclear watchdog agency concludes a probe of Iran's past nuclear activities. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Sunday that its chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, and Iranian leaders agreed to aim for a mid-February deadline for wrapping up the investigation.

The reported meeting in Berlin would be the first by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and their counterparts from Britain, China, France and Germany since the US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was made public Dec. 3.

The six countries offered Iran a package of economic incentives and political rewards in June 2006 if it agreed to freeze uranium enrichment before talks on its nuclear program. Iran refused and has defied two Security Council resolutions demanding suspension of enrichment.

While acknowledging the council is divided on the issue of tough sanctions, the senior official said all five permanent members remained committed to a third set of sanctions unless Iran freezes enrichment and obeys other council demands.

Enrichment technology can produce the material needed to make atomic warheads, but Iran says its drive to create an industrial-scale enrichment program is intended solely to produce fuel for nuclear reactors that would generate electricity.