Meanwhile, Iran said Thursday it is ready to negotiate over a new package of economic incentives put forward by the major powers seeking to persuade Tehran to curb nuclear work. But Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the United States should stop lecturing Iran on its nuclear ambitions.

Manouchehr Mottaki: “America is not in the position to be happy or unhappy with our nuclear activities to produce energy for peaceful purposes, because America is the first country which used nuclear weapons and killed more than 150,000 of the people in Japan. America is a country which even now is testing the third, fourth or fifth generation of the nuclear bomb. Such a country is not in the position to instruct other nations to have nuclear energy or not.”