Key European states allied with the U.S. have begun discussing whether to tolerate a partial freeze by Iran of its uranium enrichment program - a stance that could put them at odds with Washington, officials said Friday.

The officials - U.S. and European diplomats and government employees - told The Associated Press Friday that the deliberations, involving senior British, French and German decision-makers, were preliminary, and that no conclusions had been drawn. Germany was supportive, France opposed and Britain noncommittal, they said.

"Nothing is on paper," a European diplomat said, describing the tentative plan as a freeze for peace.

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Still, with the United States still insisting that any enrichment freeze be total, such consideration could put major strains on U.S.-led attempts to show unity on the issue, and could potentially lead Washington to settle for less than it has been insisting on in attempts to ban the prospects of Iran having nuclear arms.

A U.S. official said there is some truth to the reports of the discussions among the British, French and Germans, adding "we're still very skittish on that."

America has been counting on Britain, France and Germany in its four-year campaign to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions, specifically by getting it to abandon uranium enrichment, a program that can create the fissile material for the core of nuclear warheads.

The support of permanent UN Security Council members Britain and France in particular has been key. The council passed two sets of sanctions since December against Iran - particularly for its defiance of council demands for an enrichment freeze.

With permanent members Russia and China only reluctantly backing sanctions, and only in weakened form, a United States without European support would have the hard choice of either backing away from its insistence on a full enrichment freeze or being isolated.

The officials spoke amid signs that Tehran was ready for concessions in attempts to weaken international pressure on it over the enrichment issue, with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency saying the Islamic republic had agreed to provide him with answers on past suspicious nuclear activities within two months.

Beside demanding an enrichment freeze - and a stop to construction of a plutonium-producing reactor - the Security Council has called on Iran to provide answers to the IAEA on activities that could be linked to a weapons program.

While the key issue remains enrichment, any follow-through by Tehran on its decision to share sensitive information with the agency could increase good will toward it and feed sentiment for a compromise that would allow it to retain some elements of its enrichment program.

Earlier Friday, Iran's interior minister was quoted as saying that Iran has 100 kg of enriched uranium material in storage, in comments that may worry Western powers who fear the Islamic Republic is seeking to build nuclear bombs.

But a senior Iranian nuclear official cast doubt on the information. "The figures are not correct," said the official, who declined to be named.

The ISNA news agency quoted Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi as saying in a speech in southwestern Iran late on Thursday: "More than 100 kg of enriched uranium materials have been delivered to storages."

He also said "more than 150 tons of initial materials of uranium gas is ready and has been stored." Uranium gas is fed into centrifuges to make enriched uranium.

The minister was speaking two days before Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani was due to hold a new round of exploratory talks with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana in the Portuguese capital Lisbon on Saturday.

Iran has repeatedly refused United Nations demands to halt uranium enrichment, a process to make fuel for nuclear power plants that can also provide material for weapons if enriched to a much higher degree. Tehran says its purposes are entirely peaceful.

Diplomats and nuclear analysts say roughly 500 kg of low-enriched uranium would be needed as material for one bomb but it would have to be re-introduced into centrifuge machines reconfigured to produce bomb-grade uranium.

They say this would be difficult to hide from UN inspectors, and Iran has repeatedly said it has no intention of trying to produce highly-enriched uranium suitable for weapons.

The last meeting between Larijani and Solana, in Madrid last month, did not yield any breakthrough on the dispute. Instead of halting enrichment, as the UN Security Council has demanded, Iran has rapidly expanded its program.

The UN Security Council has already imposed two rounds of limited sanctions on Iran over its refusal to halt such work.

The United States said on Tuesday it and five other world powers - Britain, Russia, France, Germany and China - had begun discussing a third round of UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear defiance.

Iran, OPEC's second-largest crude exporter, says it solely aims to generate electricity so that it can export more of its valuable oil and gas. Its leadership says its nuclear program has passed the point of no return.

"When the world saw that the [Iranian] nation is pursuing this goal with unity, the world has surrendered, " Pourmohammadi said. "We have passed the dangerous moment."