MUNICH — Iran considers an offer to negotiate directly with the U.S. a “step forward” and expects to resume meetings with world powers later this month, the Persian Gulf nation’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said.

Talks to defuse tension over Iran’s nuclear work will be held in Kazakhstan Feb. 25, Salehi said Saturday at the Munich Security Conference. The U.S. will offer bilateral negotiations if the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is prepared for “serious” discussions, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said the day before at the same event.

“We have no such thing as red lines with bilateral negotiations with the U.S.,” Salehisaid. “The leader has said it over and over, that negotiation with the U.S. has meaning only when it comes on equal footing.”

The Persian Gulf nation, under dozens of sanctions and a decade-long investigation, insists its nuclear program is peaceful. Israel and the U.S. have said Iran is pursuing atomic weapons and haven’t ruled out military strikes against nuclear installations.

“No option should be removed from the table,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Baraksaid at the same conference. “When we say it we mean it, and we expect others to mean it as well.”

The U.S. will do whatever it must to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear-weapons capability, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in her final interview before leaving office last week, underscoring one of the challenges facing her successor, John Kerry.

While engagement remains a “central pillar” of the Obama administration’s strategy, “at some point the window for engagement has to close,” Clinton said, declining to give a specific deadline by which Iran must comply or face military consequences. She said maintaining “ambiguity” is beneficial in the negotiations.

Clinton also said there has been disagreement within the Iranian leadership on “how to maximize the leverage they have,” and when it’s “in their interest to settle” on talks. There’s political “jockeying” going on ahead of Iran’s elections in June, Clinton said in the Thursday interview.

Clinton said U.S. sanctions have led to a sharp drop in Iranian oil exports. While Iran may be trying to dodge restrictions, she said, the U.S. is satisfied with compliance by nations such as China, India and Turkey that earned 180-day renewable exemptions by cutting purchases of Iranian crude.

She downplayed a media report that Iran’s oil exports rose in December, saying that monthly numbers shouldn’t betaken at “face value” because numerous factors are behind any figures.

The meeting in Kazakhstan would be the first round of talks since the breakdown of negotiations between Iran and the so- called P5+1 - which includes China, France, Germany, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. - last June in Moscow. The sides had met for over a year without result before talks stalled. While Salehi said publicly that the Feb. 25 meeting in Kazakhstan will take place, the Iranians haven’t officially confirmed it with the P5+1, a U.S. official said, speaking anonymously to discuss diplomatic matters.

Information for this article was contributed by Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and Nicole Gaouette of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 5 on 02/04/2013