The European Union has called for the United Nations Security Council to intervene in the nuclear dispute with Iran, but stopped short of calling for Tehran's formal referral to the top world body for possible sanctions.
The Islamic Republic is striving to head off any move by the International Atomic Energy Agency to report Tehran to the Security Council over its nuclear programme when the IAEA's governing board holds crisis talks in Vienna on Thursday.
"The negotiating process has reached an impasse and the involvement of the Security Council is needed to ensure that the requests - many times repeated - of the agency are respected," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said in Brussels.
Iran had put its ideas to EU officials in Brussels just hours before Washington and its European allies were to try to get Russia and China to back tough diplomatic action against it.
Douste-Blazy told a news briefing the talks with Iran had yielded nothing new, but added that negotiations could be reopened if Tehran complied with IAEA requests.
Javad Vaeedi, deputy head of Iran 's Supreme National Security Council, said the meeting had been positive.
Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, also said the EU would seek to "involve" the Security Council when the IAEA meets on Thursday.
Russia and China have been reluctant to see Iran referred formally to the council, wary of opening the way for eventual UN sanctions that could hurt their commercial interests.
But they also share some of the West's worries about Iran , and Russia has offered to enrich Iranian uranium on its soil as a safeguard against any diversion for military use.
Iran has voiced interest in the Russian proposal, but the United States and Britain dismiss this as posturing to avoid being reported to the Security Council by the IAEA.
Foreign ministers of the EU trio and the United States will meet their Russian and Chinese counterparts in London over dinner this evening to seek a strategy for the IAEA meeting.