"If Iran is ready to come back to the original agreement we can only welcome it," he told reporters at a news conference.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said late Tuesday that Iran had "no problem" in shipping its uranium stocks abroad for further enrichment, the key part of a UN-brokered deal aimed at defusing the crisis.

Iranian officials had until now refused to send their uranium stocks abroad. Lavrov had said last month he regretted Iran's apparent rejection of the deal and warned the world would not be able to wait forever in the stanoff.

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