Paris ? Leading international powers may have an agreement within weeks on a third U.N. sanctions resolution against Iran over its nuclear program, a French diplomat said after high-level talks in Paris on Saturday.

The French official insisted that the goal was to bring the Iranians to the negotiating table – not lead to a “global confrontation” with Iran. But he added, “all the efforts to open negotiations are going nowhere.”

The diplomat described Friday’s meeting in London between EU envoy Javier Solana and Saeed Jalili, Iran’s senior nuclear negotiator, as a “disaster.”

That meeting had been considered a last chance for Iran to give in to U.N. pressure and freeze its enrichment program before a European Union report on Iran’s nuclear program that will be used in the discussion of new sanctions.

While Saturday’s closed-door talks produced no firm decision on the sanctions, the official said a compromise text on a new resolution would be circulated among the six countries involved – the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany – next week.

“There are elements that allow us to think we will have a resolution in the short term,” the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. He said he was “relatively optimistic” about having a resolution in the next few weeks.

Clamor for new sanctions – led by the United States, Britain and France – mounted after Friday’s collapse of the 18-month EU effort to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment.

Russia and China, the other two veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, have been more reticent about a third set of sanctions.

Russian and U.S. officials declined to comment after Saturday’s talks. The chief American participant, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, left France immediately afterward. The Russian official scheduled to attend, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak, was stuck in Canada because of snow, and a colleague attended in his place.

The French diplomat insisted that there were no “deep differences” among the countries at Saturday’s talks, and said the new Chinese negotiator was more cooperative than his predecessor.

He would not give details of the third resolution, except to say it would be “along the same logic” as the first two.

Iran increased enrichment activities following the previous two sets of U.N. sanctions, and maintains its nuclear program is exclusively aimed at generating electricity. Western powers fear it could be used to build weapons.

The Iranian negotiator said Saturday he would go to Moscow next week. In comments carried on Iran’s IRNA news agency, Jalili dismissed concerns about the collapse of the EU negotiation effort and about Solana’s upcoming report.

“We expect the international community to adopt a positive stand on Iran’s cooperation with” the International Atomic Energy Agency, Jalili said in Tehran.