GENEVA – Iran wants to continue talks on its nuclear program if Western countries are willing to return to the negotiating table, Iran's former chief negotiator said Tuesday.

Ali Larijani, who is now Iran's parliamentary speaker, said the country is prepared to negotiate but cannot accept what he described as “conditions that were impossible to achieve.”

The U.S., Britain and France, concerned that Iran is working toward building an atomic bomb, want it to halt its uranium enrichment program before allowing talks to resume. A U.N. Security Council resolution last month reaffirmed previous sanctions but stopped short of imposing new ones because of resistance from China and Russia.

Larijani, who resigned as Iran's nuclear negotiator last year, described the latest U.N. resolution as “the outdated tactics of carrot and stick, and it doesn't produce a result.”

But he added: “We have never left the table. They were the ones who have left the negotiating table.”

Larijani's remarks came as Iran announced that 700 Russian-trained engineers are about to begin work at its first nuclear power plant, in the southern port of Bushehr.

Iran's official IRNA news agency cited nuclear official Ahmad Fayyazbakhsh as saying the plant would begin working later in the current Iranian calendar year, which ends in March 2009.

The country says its ambitions are purely peaceful, and it has no plans to build nuclear weapons.

But concern in the West has been heightened by the rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Politicians in the West have periodically raised the possibility of a military strike on Iran if it does not halt uranium enrichment and open its nuclear program to scrutiny.

Both Republican U.S. presidential candidate John McCain and his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, have advocated more intense diplomatic efforts to resolve the West's dispute with Iran.

Larijani declined to comment on what impact the change of administration in the United States could have on the nuclear talks.

Iran, too, could have a new president next year. The country has presidential elections set for June 12. Among those who might challenge Ahmadinejad are former president Mohammad Khatami, a reformist, and Larijani.

“I don't have any specific plan to run for president,” Larijani told journalists in Geneva, but he stopped short of ruling out the possibility.