(BRUSSELS) - EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana held "positive" talks Friday with Iran's nuclear negotiator and expects elements of Tehran's response to an international offer very soon, his spokeswoman said.

"They had a positive, constructive conversation. They agreed to remain in contact" during telephone talks, said Solana's spokeswoman, Cristina Gallach.

She said Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili announced that he would send a response "very soon" to an international package of incentives aimed at persuading Tehran to suspend nuclear enrichment activities.

It would contain "more concrete elements", she said.

However Gallach underlined: "Even if we formally receive (Iran's answer) some time will be needed to analyse it."

Earlier, Iran's Mehr news agency said that the Islamic republic's ambassador had delivered its answer to a letter outlining the proposals by world powers.

Solana was in London Friday and was not returning to Brussels this weekend.

Gallach declined to say whether he would be likely to see the offer Friday, but she did say that he would not make any statement on it before Monday.

In an effort to persuade Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, permanent UN Security Council members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany have re-worked an offer originally made in 2006.

The offer, presented by their envoy Solana last month, proposes a series of technological and other incentives in exchange for Tehran's suspension of enrichment operations.

Solana has been battling to establish high-level talks aimed at getting Iran to accept the package, but the Islamic republic has refused in the past to suspend enrichment as a precondition for negotiating.

However the possibility exists for a period of "pre-negotiation" during which the major powers would halt sanction action at the United Nations if Iran stops bringing centrifuges on line, diplomats have said.

Iran insists it has the right to enrich uranium to make nuclear fuel to help meet its electricity needs and has so far defied Security Council resolutions which demand it halt the process.

At highly refined levels, such work can also make the fissile core of an atomic bomb but Iran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful.

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