President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has made a proposal over the Iranian atomic programme, contradicting Iran's top nuclear negotiator, media reported Friday.
Ali Larijani had said on Wednesday Putin made a special proposal to break the deadlock over the Iranian nuclear programme in talks with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during his landmark visit to Iran this week. But Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency: "There was no nuclear proposal."
According to the official news agency IRNA, Ahmadinejad said Putin's only message was "the message of friendship and cooperation." When pressed over whether there was a nuclear proposal, he said: "Putin did not talk about this."
Larijani did not give details over the nature of the proposal, saying its content would be announced at a later date. "Putin put forward a particular suggestion during his meeting with the supreme leader," said Larijani after Putin's visit on Tuesday, the first by a Kremlin chief since World War II.