Iran will receive help forits nuclear programme ifit stops activities that can produce weapons-grade material, the European Union said yesterday.

Meeting in Brussels, EU foreign ministers endorsed a twin-track approach, previously sketched out by the UK, France and Germany, that would set out both incentives and restrictive measures to convince Iran to comply with calls to halt uranium enrichment.

"We are prepared to work on a co-operation package and support Iran's development of a proliferation-proof civilian nuclearprogramme," said Ursula Plassnik, Austrian foreign minister, who chaired the meeting. Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief, called the offer a "bold package" and said it could include security guarantees.

The EU wants to reach agreement on the offer at a meeting in London on Friday with diplomats from the US, Russia and China. Three previous such meetings have failed to break a deadlock over the world's big powers' response to the Iranian programme, with tensions between the US and Russia running high. The EU hopes that by spelling out incentives for Iran, it can persuade Moscow to drop its reservations about a United Nations Security Council resolution.

Iran has already dismissed the EU's approach, which the bloc says will go further than a previous offer Tehran rejected last August.

"They want to offer us things they call incentives in return for renouncing our rights," Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran's president, said on Sunday.

While the new offer would only come into force if Iran halted enrichment, diplomats said it could leave the door half-open for enrichment in the distant future. The previous offer included "an expert mission to help identify the requirement for a research reactor in Iran and how best to meet that requirement", "sustained access to nuclear fuel" and a promise not to stop European companies participating in Iran's programme.