German foreign minister to meet Elbaradei Thursday

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier will travel to Vienna on Thursday for talks with U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei ahead of a planned meeting of world powers on Iran next week.

A German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman confirmed on Wednesday that Steinmeier would hold "political talks" with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief and with Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik in Vienna.

Steinmeier is expected to quiz ElBaradei on the details of his two-day trip to Iran last week, where the IAEA chief met with Iranian leaders to push for swifter cooperation in his agency's long-running inquiry into Iran's nuclear programme.

ElBaradei secured an Iranian agreement to answer the last outstanding questions in a long-running IAEA inquiry into Tehran's past secret nuclear activity within one month.

Steinmeier's trip comes ahead of an expected meeting of foreign ministers from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany next week in Berlin to narrow differences on a new round of sanctions against Iran for its refusal to give up sensitive nuclear work.

Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting would take place next Tuesday in the German capital, although Berlin has not confirmed it.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters on Tuesday the idea of a meeting would be to talk about a third Security Council resolution against Iran.

The West fears Tehran is seeking a nuclear weapon but Iran says its nuclear programme is solely for power generation.

(Writing by Noah Barkin; editing by Sami Aboudi)