IRAN - Feb 11 - Iran Raises Hopes Of Nuclear Settlement.

Iran's top security official holds out hope for a "negotiated settlement" on Tehran's nuclear programme and says the programme will pose no threat to Israel or any other country. Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, also told an international security conference in Munich that his government was willing to discuss technical limitations on uranium enrichment, to ensure it could not make the highly enriched uranium needed for a nuclear weapon. In remarks that deviated from a prepared text, he also said Iran was open to talks on a multinational arrangement for uranium enrichment. But he suggested Tehran still considered it had the right to conduct its own uranium enrichment. Despite international fears that Iranian rhetoric would be ratcheted up Sunday as hundreds of thousands rallied in Tehran to mark the 28th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, the country's leaders said they were open to compromise over the programme although they would not abandon it. After discussions with Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy supremo, Larijani struck an optimistic note. "An important point is that I felt that Europe has the necessary will for a settlement of this case and there is the political will on our side to have a negotiated settlement". Earlier, he told the conference: There are solutions to address your concern: we don't want you to be concerned". European officials said the meeting was too brief to ascertain whether Larijani's comments represented a potential breakthrough. Meanwhile, on Feb 11 a US defence official in Baghdad said 170 coalition troops had been killed by Iranian-made roadside bombs, as US anger rises at Tehran's alleged involvement in the war. The official said there was "a growing body" of evidence of Iranian weapons being smuggled into Iraq and used to kill their soldiers. Last week in Seville, US defence secretary Robert Gates, said Washington had "pretty good" evidence that Iran was providing militias in Iraq with sophisticated explosive devices called "explosively formed projectiles". He said the evidence included serial numbers and markings on fragments of exploded devices. Tehran denies the charge and blames US soldiers for the violence and for inflaming tensions between Shi'ite and once-dominant Sunni. But Gates dismissed suggestions that the recent increase in anti-Iranian rhetoric from US officials was a prelude to war. After the Iranian supreme leader threatened to respond to any US attack on Iran, Gates that day responded that it was "just another day in the Persian Gulf". Asked later whether his response was aimed at ratcheting down the American rhetoric, he replied: In the last few weeks there's been an effort in Washington actually to tone down everybody else. I don't know how many times the president, [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran, that the second carrier group [recently dispatched to the Gulf] is there to reassure our allies, as well as to send a signal that we've been in the Persian Gulf for decades and we intend to stay there. And I think these are fairly modest statements, frankly". At a rally in Tehran, Pres Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad also adopted a less combative tone, saying Iran was ready for "dialogue" and would remain within the NPT, which prohibits the development of atomic weapons. But he also stressed that Iran "would never accept humiliation" by suspending nuclear activities, which the UN Security Council has demanded by this month. "A huge power like Iran cannot be threatened with sanctions", he told cheering crowds. Iran's reformists and pragmatic conservatives have in recent weeks been trying to pressurise Ayat Khamenei to make Ahmadi-Nejad adopt a more measured approach. But one analyst told the FT he detected in Sunday's speech little evidence of a significant shift in Ahmadi-Nejad's views. "He was as tough as ever", said Nasser Hadian, professor of politics at Tehran University. Ahmadi-Nejad said Iran had already achieved "its inalienable right", an apparent reference to proficiency in fuel-cycle technology, and promised further news of "great" progress. The president did not, as had been expected by some western diplomats, announce an expansion of the number of centrifuges - the device used to enrich uranium - at its Natanz plant. Neither did he announce that gas had been introduced to the centrifuges, as some had predicted. A report from Muhammad ElBaradei, director-general of the IAEA, is due to be presented to the UN watchdog's board on February 21. ElBaradei has tried to get negotiations under way by calling for a "time out", in which Iran would suspend enrichment simultaneously with the start of talks.