Tehran  - Iran would not trust the West over future nuclear cooperation, especially in the field of nuclear fuel, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Sunday.

The five member states of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany would be ready to provide Iran with nuclear fuel for its civil nuclear programmes if the Islamic state gave in to their demand to suspend uranium enrichment.

"We have been deceived in the past over this issue and will not be deceived again - we have had promises from several
(Western) countries in this regard but none of them were realized," Mottaki told reporters in Tehran.

He referred to the United States promises in 1975 to provide Iran with 23 megawatt nuclear energy and the Siemens subsidiary company KWU of Germany, which in the 1970s started the construction of a nuclear plant on the Persian Gulf island of Bushehr but dropped the project after the 1979 Iranian revolution.

In the mid-1990s, Russia continued the project, but its completion - scheduled for the beginning of the new millennium - was delayed several times. Recently the completion was scheduled for 2009.

"Iran will act wisely in this regard and neither withdraw from its right to enrich uranium nor become dependent on others for providing nuclear fuel for our plants," Mottaki added.

Tehran insists on its nuclear projects to be peaceful and says that as signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the country has an internationally acknowledged right for a civil nuclear programme, including uranium enrichment.

Iran has indicated it is ready to hold negotiations with the world powers to settle the dispute, but without any pre-conditions. (dpa)