Russian Support To The Muslim World.

BRUSSELS: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday there was no proof that Iran is try to develop a nuclear weapon and urged the West to respect and reach out to the Islamic republic.

"There is no proof that Iran even has decided to make a bomb," he told the Brussels Forum conference, alongside EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who on behalf of world powers has led talks to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Lavrov said the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was best placed to monitor Iran's activities and establish whether it might try to covertly develop a weapon under the guise of a civilian programme.

"As long as the IAEA works in Iran, the IAEA monitors all these centrifuges which produce low enriched uranium for the fuel purpose" real concerns it may develop a bomb could be allayed, he said.

Uranium enrichment is used to make fuel for a nuclear reactor, but at highly refined levels it can serve to produce the core of an atomic weapon.

"To change it to the weapon grade uranium you need to do manipulations which would be immediately known by cameras," Lavrov said.

His comments came just after US President Barack Obama issued a video message to Iran, offering to open a new chapter in relations with the Islamic Republic. The two nations have not had diplomatic ties since 1980.

"Iran must be engaged as a constructive part of the solution and not of the problem," Lavrov said.

"It's negotiations, it's respect and it's engagement of Iran in all the areas ... including security dialogue with Iran on all the issues in the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon."

Russia, a member of the United Nations Security Council, has generally resisted a more hard-line approach against Iran taken by former US president George W. Bush and is helping Tehran build a nuclear power station.