IRAN - Jan 3 - Iranian Official Urges New Nuclear Talks.

Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator close to the influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, calls for renewed diplomacy with the west to break the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme. He also implied that Iran had no choice but to accept last month's UN Security Council resolution, which imposed sanctions and set a two-month deadline for Tehran to suspend almost all its nuclear activities. But he said Tehran should also continue to bargain over its "rights" to a nuclear fuel cycle. Mousavian's frank briefing reflected growing concern among pragmatists in Tehran at the direction of the international situation. President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad has favoured defiance over the nuclear issue and has dismissed the UN resolution as "invalid". The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency on Tuesday quoted him as saying that the country would soon start producing nuclear fuel on an industrial scale and "defend its interests powerfully". But Mousavian said the UN resolution was "very tricky" and could lead to further sanctions in addition to the measures already agreed against individual Iranians and companies involved in the atomic programme". It is easy to get into [the attention of] the Security Council but very difficult to get out", he said. "The Security Council is the highest authority on international peace and stability, and there is no other authority to which we can appeal". The remarks suggest that Iran's pragmatists and reformists are taking a more active role in shaping Iran's policy after the poor showing in last month's elections by allies of Ahmadi-Nejad. In spite of Ahmadi-Nejad's comments on the UN resolution, Ayat Ali Khamenei - Iran's supreme leader who has a pre-eminent say in Iran's leadership group - has not as yet spoken in public on Tehran's response. "Any comment by the leader would be the final word from Iran - and I think he is studying the case as the policymakers discuss how we can make a breakthrough", said a leading Iranian journalist. Mousavian was centrally involved in Tehran's nuclear negotiations with the EU between 2003 and 2005, before he and several colleagues were removed after Ahmadi-Nejad's 2005 election win. He is deputy head of the Centre for Strategic Research, a state body that briefs Iran's leaders and which is associated Rafsanjani. Iran's pragmatists and reformists polled better than expected three weeks ago in elections for municipal councils and for the Experts Assembly, a theological body that supervises Ayat Khamenei.