Foreign Ministers from Germany, Russia, China, the United States, France and Britain are to hold talks in Berlin on Tuesday on the Iranian nuclear program, the German Foreign Ministry announced on Monday.

According to a statement issued by the ministry, at the invitation of German Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei W. Lavrov, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and European Union (EU) High Representative Javier Solana will attend the meeting.

"On the fringes of the meeting, Federal Minister Steinmeier will conduct a number of bilateral talks," said the statement.

Washington and its EU allies are pushing for a third set of United Nations sanctions against Iran for defying international demands that it stop uranium enrichment activities that they fear could be used to make a bomb.

In December last year, however, the U.S. administration's own intelligence said Tehran had stopped an alleged secret nuclear weapons program in 2003.

Iran has denied that it wants to build an atomic bomb, and maintains that its nuclear program is a peaceful drive to produce civilian energy.

(Xinhua News Agency January 22, 2008)