Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev held out the prospect of support for Iran sanctions in talks with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a U.S. official said in Moscow after Russia’s foreign minister called any sanctions threat counterproductive.

Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed yesterday that the focus for now should be on diplomacy aimed at ensuring that Iran makes its nuclear program more transparent. Medvedev’s subsequent private comments, while welcomed by U.S. officials as a sign of accord with Russia, fell short of a clear, public endorsement of future sanctions.

The U.S. and Russia are signaling tactical differences: U.S. officials say they want to hold out the threat of sanctions to coax Iran into fulfilling its international obligations, while Russian officials such as Lavrov say such a threat would undermine Iranian cooperation.

“At this stage all efforts should be made to support the negotiating process,” Lavrov said after his separate talks with Clinton. “Sanctions and the threat of pressure in the current situation are counterproductive.”

Still, the State Department official, who briefed reporters after Clinton’s meeting with Medvedev, said the Russian president agreed to seek new sanctions if Iran doesn’t implement a plan discussed in Geneva on Oct. 1 to send its low-enriched uranium stockpile to Russia or allow inspectors full access to its nuclear sites.

Improved Ties

The U.S., Russia and China are “closer than before” on their policies regarding Iran’s nuclear program, Clinton said today in an interview on Ekho Moskvy radio in Moscow.

Clinton came to Russia seeking some agreement on Iran as part of a broader Obama administration push to improve ties that chilled during the Bush administration over missile defense and other areas of disagreement such as U.S. support for Georgia.

Lavrov made clear to Clinton during their meeting that Russia was on board with the plan to take most of Iran’s low- enriched uranium out of the country and turn it into fuel for a Tehran medical research reactor, another U.S. official said.

The U.S. and its European allies are concerned that Iran is making headway on acquiring the capability to build a nuclear weapon. Three rounds of United Nations Security Council sanctions have failed to halt Iran’s uranium enrichment, and the U.S. has said it will wait until year’s end before seeking any new sanctions.

‘Productive Results’

The international community wants Iran to demonstrate that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. The Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, of which Iran is a party, prohibits member states that lack nuclear weapons from acquiring them.

Medvedev said in New York last month that while sanctions “rarely lead to productive results,” in some cases they are “inevitable.” U.S. officials welcomed his comments at the time as an indication that Russia, which had long been cool to new penalties, was leaving the door open for fresh sanctions.

Medvedev’s remarks indicated a desire to show that Russia is ready to work with the West on Iran, not a reassessment of the country’s nuclear program, which Russia considers peaceful in nature, Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Moscow-based Russia in Global Affairs magazine, said by phone late yesterday. Russia is helping Iran build its first nuclear power plant at Bushehr.

‘Military Cooperation’

“If it comes to concrete sanctions, the discussion will become more complicated,” Lukyanov said. “That would mean not abstract support for the American position, but direct harm to specific economic interests. I can’t imagine Russia agreeing to a ban on military cooperation with Iran.”

Medvedev told CNN last month that Russia’s Iran relationship has a “military component,” and he will observe international law in his final decision on arms contracts.

Clinton said that while new sanctions against Iran aren’t yet inevitable, “in the absence of significant progress and assurances that Iran isn’t pursuing nuclear weapons,” the U.S. will seek “to rally international opinion” in favor of sanctions.

Iran told United Nations nuclear inspectors last month it is building an underground nuclear-fuel plant, a facility that the U.S., Britain and France said was a secret site.

During the October meeting near Geneva with the U.S., other members of the UN Security Council and Germany, Iran agreed to allow an inspection of the new enrichment facility outside Tehran. The country also agreed to meet with negotiators for the U.S. and other UN members later this month.

‘Fly in the Ointment’

Iran’s nuclear policy “often has an opportunistic character,” Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said in an interview published in the Izvestia newspaper today. He described news of the enrichment facility as a “fly in the ointment” that “runs counter to the repeated demands of the UN Security Council.”

“This issue shouldn’t be dramatized, however,” Patrushev said. “The Iranians’ stated readiness to allow IAEA inspectors access to the facility in the near future may help to ease concerns.” The agreement reached in Geneva allows for “cautious optimism” regarding Iran’s nuclear program, he said.

Besides Iran, Russia probed what plans President Barack Obama has for missile defense in Europe after he scrapped a Bush administration program to station a radar station and missile interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic.

‘Reason to Hope’

Clinton told Medvedev the U.S. has no plans to station missile-defense components in Ukraine after the Russian president asked about reports suggesting as much.

Also yesterday, Clinton met with representatives of civil society and visited a Boeing Co. design center in Moscow where she said there’s “reason to hope” that the American aerospace giant will win a contract potentially worth more than $3 billion to sell planes to Rosavia, Russia’s new state-run airline.

Chicago-based Boeing, the world’s second-largest commercial planemaker, seeks to sell 50 narrow-body planes with purchase rights for 15 more, Dmitry Krol, the company’s Moscow- based spokesman, said. The 50 planes are worth at least $3.6 billion, according to catalog prices for the Boeing 737-800 on the company’s Web site.

To contact the reporter on this story: Janine Zacharia in Moscow at jzacharia@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 14, 2009 03:44 EDT