EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana will cast final judgement on Friday on whether Iran might be willing to suspend sensitive nuclear activities, with new UN sanctions seeming all but inevitable.
Solana is to meet Iran's top nuclear envoy, Saeed Jalili, in London to hear the Islamic republic's case just hours before reporting to major world powers on what little progress he has made in almost 18 months of contacts.
Ahead of the meeting, which the EU's top diplomat had insisted should have taken place far earlier in the month, Iranian government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham said that Jalili "will present new ideas and initiatives". Normally extremely optimistic, Solana has appeared increasingly frustrated as time has slipped away for him to make his evaluation to the UN Security Council by the November 30 deadline.