Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani is due to meet with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei in Vienna on Friday, Iran's representative to IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh announced on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Iran's Supreme National Security Council said in a statement that Larijani will hold a new round of talks with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Lisbon, Portugal, on Saturday.

The meeting in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon is arranged in line with the invitation from Portuguese officials, the statement said, adding that the new round of talks would be a follow-up to the discussions held in Madrid last month between the two sides.

Larijani met with Solana in Madrid, Spain, late last month, but their latest talks failed to break the deadlock over Tehran's nuclear program.

On March 24, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a new resolution, the second punitive one, with tougher sanctions to pressure Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities.

However, an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report in May said that Iran continued to resist the UN Security Council ban on enrichment and instead was expanding its activities.

(Xinhua News Agency June 21, 2007)