"Mr Jalili will be travelling to Moscow tomorrow," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters on Sunday. "He will meet with senior officials about strategic affairs."

His trip comes after talks on Friday between Jalili and the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to break the deadlock ended in failure. Solana said afterwards that he had been "disappointed" by the discussions.

The six main powers dealing with Iran's contested nuclear programme also met in Paris on Saturday and agreed to start work on a resolution calling for new sanctions against Iran at the UN Security Council.

The text would be sent to the UN Security Council in New York if the countries manage to agree on the details, a French diplomatic source said.

The source said the new resolution would be a compromise between Western nations and China and Russia. A resolution could be agreed upon in the short term, perhaps in the coming weeks, the source said.

Russia and China -- both veto-wielding permanent UN Security Council members -- have until now been reluctant to support a US-led drive for a third set of UN sanctions against Tehran.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov both visited Tehran in October, and Iran is counting on Moscow's support in the nuclear crisis.

But Russia has also called on Tehran to do more to clear up suspicions over its nuclear activities.

Meanwhile, Hosseini said that Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki would visit Moscow "soon" at the head of an economic delegation.