Munich (DPA) — There was a flurry of hope on Friday when Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki unexpectedly arrived at the Munich Security Conference that he might be about to break new ground in the dispute over his country’s nuclear programme.

But by Saturday afternoon that hope had turned to skepticism as top officials at the annual conference said that Mottaki’s declared willingness to talk was more likely to be a delaying tactic than a genuine offer of compromise.

“Nothing pleases Iran more than an approach in which talk and more talk is the rule of the game... Diversion, ladies and gentlemen, is a distinctly Persian talent,’’ said Prince Turki al Faisal, chairman of the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh.

In recent months, debate in the controversy over Iran’s nuclear programme has focused on a proposal from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which would allow Iran to ship low-grade uranium abroad for enrichment, and then re-import it for use in a medical reactor used in treating cancer.

On Tuesday, after months of resistance, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that his country was ready to accept the proposal - leading to guarded optimism in Western capitals.

“If Iran is willing to take up the IAEA’s proposed offer, it would be a positive sign of their willingness to engage with the international community on nuclear issues,’’ Britain’s Foreign Office said in a statement.

But on Friday, Mottaki said that while his country was ready in principle to accept the deal, in practice it would want to change some of the details, such as how much uranium should be swapped.

“The quantity should be announced by the party who is going to use this enriched uranium, and the quantity will be announced based on our need: this is the most important point,’’ he said.

That caveat provoked scepticism at the Munich conference, where it was widely interpreted as a bid to play for time.

Mottaki has “experience that you can say very little with lots of rhetorical flourishes. They are trying to win time, and this is one more attempt to carry on the charade,’’ said German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg.

Indeed, later on Saturday afternoon the head of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, said that in a one-on-one talk with Mottaki, “there was not a new proposal’’ from Iran on the issue.

The influential US Senator Joe Lieberman reacted angrily, saying that Mottaki “came here to talk talk talk, not to walk the walk.’’

“They just came to obfuscate and lie,’’ Lieberman told the German Press Agency dpa.

But while most attendees saw Mottaki’s move as a stalling tactic, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said that it might equally indicate a lack of clarity within the Iranian regime itself.

“I am not convinced that really in the Iranian government... they have a clear conception of what they want. There are a lot of different tracks in Iran,’’ he pointed out.

Indeed, since Iran first rejected the IAEA proposal in the autumn, Western powers have begun calling for a new round of United Nations sanctions aimed at crippling Iran’s nuclear programme.

“In Iran you certainly have hardliners, but you also have people in the government who feel that it’s the moment now to react: If not it will be too late,’’ Asselborn told dpa.

“In the international community even those who are not hardliners... (say) there will be no other possibility than to elaborate a fourth (UN) resolution and speak again about sanctions and sanctions and sanctions.

That cannot be in the interest of Iran,’’ he said.