Iran ready for nuclear agreement: Foreign minister

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has underlined Tehran's readiness for a nuclear agreement, the media reported Thursday.

He made the remarks while speaking to the US National Public Radio (NPR) on the first day of his visit to New York to resume the seventh round of talks between Iran and six major world powers over Tehran's nuclear energy programme which started Wednesday with Zarif hosting a working launch with the European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, IRNA news agency reported.

Zarif talked about Iran's nuclear talks with the P5+1 group or the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the US, Russia, China, France and Britain - plus Germany, and stressed that all "wrong options" have been examined in the past.

He said now Iran was ready for an agreement.

The main thing to do now, according to the minister, was to choose the right way to put the issue to a certain group of people in the US and parts of Europe who do not favour such an agreement.

Zarif stressed that West's sanctions on Iran's peaceful nuclear programme had no effects on the country because Tehran did not forsake its nuclear programme because of them.

When sanctions stared, he added, Iran had only a few hundreds of centrifuges but now owned 20,000 as a consequence of the imposing of sanctions.

The new round of negotiations will be held on the sidelines of the 69th Session of the UN General Assembly which Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani are scheduled to attend.

Last November, Tehran and the P5+1 signed an interim deal in Geneva, which came into effect Jan 20 and expired six months later.

In July, Iran and the six countries agreed to extend negotiations until Nov 24 after they failed to reach common ground on a number of key issues.