Iran announced Wednesday that it would wait for 'a couple of more months and not years' to settle differences in its nuclear talks with the Europeans, or else ditch the negotiations.

"If the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the Europeans do not lead to a resolution in the next couple of months, we will break them off," the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Hassan Rowhani, said.

"The negotiations must be restricted to the span of the month; there is no question of years. If they reach a resolution in the next couple of months, we will continue them; otherwise we will halt them," he told reporters after attending a closed-door parliament session.

The senior official stressed that Tehran would judge the Europeans according to their 'sincerity' toward the 'basis of the negotiations' which he said was 'the mechanism of uranium enrichment without causing any concerns'.

"Our arrangements with the Europeans since March 23 are such that only issues tabled by Iran are discussed," Rowhani said, adding 'there is no question of a halt to the enrichment and the basis (of the talks) is how Iran's ideas are implemented and how enrichment is carried out without causing concerns'.

"The basis of the negotiations must be moving forward and that we take a step forward in each round of the negotiations and we are assured that we reach a resolution in the near future.

"But whenever we feel the negotiations are useless and the Europeans want to waste time ... we will halt them then and there and there is no timetable for this," Rowhani said.

The official said Iran had proposed ideas in order to move out of the existing stalemate and accelerate the negotiations.

"The criteria in the negotiations must be how to actualize tangible guarantees so that they reach a firm conclusion," Rowhani said.

The official stated that a proposal mooted in certain sections of the media as being Iran's compromise offer to the effect that the country maintains a pilot centrifuge was not actually Tehran's.

"Ultimately, the Islamic Republic will not reduce its enrichment capacity. However, the question is how we go through the stages in the negotiations and this is not something that can be revealed to the public," he said.