Iran on Sunday hit out at a perceived lack of willingness by world powers to engage it ahead of crucial nuclear talks to take place in Moscow on June 18 and 19, according to reports.

Ali Bagheri, deputy to Iran's top negotiator Saeed Jalili, said in a letter to Helga Schmid, deputy to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, that he was "surprised" by issues she was raising in correspondence with him.

He also complained that preparatory groundwork by experts from both sides was needed before the talks.

The letter, whose Farsi translation was made public by several Iranian news agencies, showed the gulf that exists between Iran and the so-called P5+1 group (the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) going into the negotiations.

Ashton's office represents the P5+1 in dealings with Iran.

Bagheri and Schmid are tasked with arranging the talks and have exchanged several letters. The Moscow round follows two earlier meetings since early April, in Istanbul and in Baghdad, that have failed to yield any progress.

Bagheri wrote to Schmid: "Your recent letter surprised me; it tabled issues that were a long way apart from the agreements... of the talks in Baghdad between Iran and the P5+1 as well as those agreed in comprehensive talks between the deputies in Geneva."

He said that Schmid had "neither introduced any plans nor responded to the proposals of the Islamic Republic of Iran" that were presented in Baghdad as a counter-offer to a P5+1 package of demands and incentives that Iran rejected.

Bagheri also asked why Ashton's office was refusing an Iranian request that the Moscow round be preceded by a meeting of experts and deputies to define its scope and agenda.

"Will the upcoming talks be successful, with an agenda with defined dimensions, or will it be successful only for the sake of talks-for-talks and without an agenda?" he wrote.

"If the agreements of each round of talks cannot be followed up at the level of deputies and experts, what guarantee will there be for the success of future talks?"

Bagheri said, however, that "Iran is ready for successful talks to be held, following a clear logic and specified proposals. I hope you can also find this readiness."

A letter by Schmid to Bagheri, obtained by AFP last Thursday, stressed that the P5+1 was focused on its own package of proposals.

"Now there is a need to engage seriously on issues of substance in order to agree on concrete confidence building steps which could be implemented swiftly. We are very much hoping for a political commitment on your side," Schmid wrote.

The Western nations in the P5+1, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, have suspicions that Iran has conducted research towards developing nuclear weapons.

Iran denies that accusation and claims it is being unfairly treated by the West under the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

P5+1's 'only path' is to accept our demands: Iran official
Tehran (AFP) June 10, 2012 - "The only path" for world powers holding talks with Iran on its nuclear activities is to accept Tehran's position, a top military representative for the country's supreme leader said on Sunday, according to the Mehr news agency.

"Unfortunately, the P5+1 logic, especially that of America, is of bullying, which is in no way acceptable to our people and officials," said Ali Saeedi, a senior figure in Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards who acts as agent for supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The comments hardened a tone of defiance coming from Tehran ahead of a new round of fraught talks to take place in Moscow on June 18-19 between Iran and the so-called P5+1 group (the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China).

They also added to a sense of pessimism growing over a separate track of dialogue between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran about inspections following a fruitless meeting last Friday in Vienna.

Saeedi accused the West of "pursuing its own aims that go beyond the (nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) regulations and the agency, and which do not fall within the IAEA's remit."

He portrayed Iran's position in both tracks as "logical and rational" and sternly told the United States and its Western allies to adopt it.

"The only path in front of them is to accept Iran's demands in an atmosphere of mutual respect, and to stop politicising it (the nuclear issue)," Mehr quoted him as saying.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has accepted the IAEA's regulations and it is in the interest of the West to adhere to the agency's regulations," he said.

Other Iranian officials have underlined that Tehran is not budging from its view that the West should ease its punishing economic embargoes and accept Iran has a "right" to uranium enrichment as first steps in the negotiations.

That insistence contrasts with the P5+1 group's equally stubborn bid to coax Iran into giving up its higher-level uranium enrichment and stocks in exchange for more modest incentives, such as airplane spare parts and the lifting of an EU ban on insurance for oil tanker shipments to Asia.

The gulf between those two positions almost caused the collapse of the last round of Iran/P5+1 talks, in Baghdad last month. Both sides, though, agreed to hold the next round in Moscow -- just two weeks before a total EU embargo on Iranian oil imports comes into effect.

Iran's defence minister, Ahmad Vahidi, was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as echoing the line that it was up to the West, not Iran, to bend in the negotiations.

"The Western nations should comply with Iran's rational demand for the use of peaceful nuclear energy," he said, adding that Iran "will not give up its rights."

Iran rejects Western and IAEA suspicions that it is pursuing the development of a nuclear weapons capability.

Vahidi and other officials have highlighted Khamenei's repeated stated opposition to possessing atomic weapons.

The Islamic republic accuses the United States and its allies of using the nuclear issue as a pretext for a broader political goal believed to be geared towards toppling Tehran's theocratic regime.

The IAEA, Iran says, is also being manipulated to that end.

Iran's envoy to the UN nuclear watchdog, Ali Soltanieh, reiterated in an interview published on Sunday by the Tehran Times newspaper that "a couple of Western governments" are trying to turn the IAEA into an intelligence service rather than a technical verification body.

He noted that Iran observes the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but that its adherence to an "additional protocol" to that treaty permitting more invasive IAEA inspections "depends on the resolution of the (nuclear) issues with respect to the UN Security Council."

The Security Council has since 2006 issued six resolutions demanding Iran comply with the additional protocol it dropped in 2005, and to suspend all of its uranium enrichment activities.