ANKARA - Iran pledged to halt enriching uranium if world powers agree to a nuclear fuel swap deal it signed with Turkey and Brazil, a newspaper on Thursday quoted Turkey`s foreign minister as saying.

The assurance came after Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki held talks with his Turkish and Brazilian counterparts Ahmet Davutoglu and Celso Amorim on Sunday in Istanbul, Milliyet newspaper reported on its website.

The UN Security Council has imposed four rounds of sanctions against Iran demanding that it halt its uranium enrichment programme. Western powers say Iran is hiding efforts to build a nuclear bomb.

Iran, which insists its atomic programme is peaceful, stepped up its uranium enrichment to 20 percent in February to make fuel for an ageing research reactor in Tehran.

In May, Turkey and Brazil brokered a deal under which Iran agreed to send 1,200 kilogrammes of low-enriched uranium to Turkey to be supplied at a later date with high-enriched uranium by Russia and France for the Tehran reactor.

"An important message given by Mottaki ... is that if the Tehran agreement comes to pass and they obtain the fuel they need for the Tehran research reactor, they will not need to continue enriching uranium to 20 percent," Davutoglu was quoted by Milliyet as saying on Wednesday.

"Important progress will be made with regards to enrichment" if there is agreement between Iran and the United States, Russia and France on the fuel swap deal, he added.

The fuel swap deal was cold-shouldered by world powers, who backed new UN sanctions against Iran in June.

The deal was a counter-proposal by Iran to an October plan drafted by the the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with the United States, Russia and France that became deadlocked.

On Monday, Iran handed a letter to the IAEA, responding to queries raised over the May deal, a day after Mottaki said Tehran was ready to immedietaly start technical negotations on the agreement.

The United States said Wednesday that it hoped for high-level talks in the coming weeks with Iran and five other world powers -- Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany -- on the original proposal for a fuel swap.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that his country was ready to resume talks with the six world powers in September.

The last high-level meeting between the two sides was in October 2009.

BDST: 16:26 HRS, July 29, 2010