Iran Tuesday signaled it wanted closer cooperation with the United Nations atomic watchdog but said the Vienna-based agency must agree to "explicit" guidelines on how to proceed to solve a nuclear row.

"Experts from both sides have to sit together and work out a mechanism to see how we can proceed," Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said after talks with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano.

But the "IAEA should come out and say that the first stage has been over" and that six outstanding issues have been answered.

"And it should be said in a very explicit way," he said.

For his part, Amano reiterated the IAEA's position that Iran is not meeting its obligations as listed in his February report and could not consider a new approach with Iran as the work plan agreed in 2007 was not complete.

"The director general indicated that he is not in a position at this stage to consider the work plan to be completed," the IAEA said in a statement.

Iran and the IAEA agreed in 2007 on a roadmap for Iran to answer outstanding concerns about its contested nuclear program.

The Security Council has demanded, with both resolutions and sanctions, that Iran stop uranium enrichment, which produces fuel for civilian power reactors but can also make the raw material for atom bombs.

In its latest report the IAEA reiterated demands that Iran clarify its position before the watchdog wraps up its probe into the Iranian nuclear program.

The U.N. agency didn't immediately react to Salehi's statement.

Salehi was to meet his Austrian counterpart Michael Spindelegger for talks later Tuesday.

The European Union suspended a travel ban against Salehi, a former head of Iran 's nuclear energy agency, in May.

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