Suspending enrichment "unacceptable": Rafsanjani

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An influential Iranian cleric said on Friday that Iran would not halt uranium enrichment work, calling it an unacceptable precondition set by six world powers for talks over the country's atomic activities.

"It (enrichment suspension) is a ridiculous precondition. It is unacceptable," Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told worshippers at Tehran university, broadcast live on state radio.

Rafsanjani, a former president, heads the powerful Expediency Council, Iran's main legislative arbitration body.

Enrichment suspension is the key condition set by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany for talks on a package of economic and technological incentives in exchange for Iran ending efforts to produce nuclear fuel.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that Iran was prepared to negotiate its uranium enrichment suspension "under fair and just conditions." He gave no time-frame for halting Iran's most sensitive part of nuclear work.

Iran says it wants to enrich uranium only for electricity. The West suspects a camouflaged quest for nuclear weapons.

Rafsanjani, a top adviser to Iran's most powerful leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urged the world powers to start talks without preconditions to resolve the dispute.

"We have always expressed our readiness ready to hold talks (with the West). But with such a precondition, what is the use of talks?" Rafsanjani said.

An Iranian official in Tehran said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana would hold talks with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani next week in an undisclosed European capital.

The Islamic state ignored a U.N. deadline to halt its nuclear fuel enrichment by August 31, and major powers agreed this week to give Solana, representing the six powers, until early October to reach a deal with Tehran.

If Tehran still refuses to suspend enrichment, the six powers will ask for U.N. sanctions to be imposed on the country.

In New York, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said that despite the many voices appearing to speak for Iran, Paris saw Larijani as its "officially appointed" contact.

"It does indeed seem that for the Iranian side, it is Mr. Larijani who is officially appointed," Douste-Blazy told a press breakfast, adding this was a "fairly new" development.

"Obviously Iran is a complex society. But we have decided to focus all efforts on our side on Mr. Solana, and for the Iranian side, it seems that it is Mr Larijani," he said.

He said he hoped the next meeting between Solana and Larijani could take place early next week.

John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Washington wanted to give the EU "the fullest possible chance to explore the options they've been pursuing" but made clear the United States was growing impatient.

"I am sure that they are just as eager to get this resolved, because there is no doubt that Iran has used the cover of negotiations to continue to perfect technical aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle," he told reporters. "Time works for the Iranian side."