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The agreement to meet there on Feb. 26 came in a telephone conversation between senior officials of Iran's National Security Council and the European Union, representing the outside powers involved in the talks, IRNA said.

The news agency report followed remarks by Iran's foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, who said on Sunday that his country was open to a renewed offer of direct talks with the United States on its nuclear program and that it looked favorably on a proposal for a new round of multilateral nuclear negotiations in late February in Kazakhstan.

IRNA did not immediately allude to the prospect of direct talks with the United States. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. offered such discussions last weekend in what Mr. Salehi described as "a step forward." 

Iranian negotiators last met with the outside powers – the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany – for high-level talks in Moscow last June. The powers are represented by the European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, who had suggested resumed talks on Feb. 25 to 26 in Kazakhstan.

In Moscow, Iran demanded the lifting of ever-tightening international economic sanctions as a precondition for discussions about reducing or eliminating its growing inventory of enriched uranium.

But the outside powers want Iran to suspend its enrichment program and satisfy the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, that it does not have a nuclear weapons program.

Iran denies Western accusations that its nuclear program is designed to provide access to the technology for nuclear weapons.

The Moscow talks ended in such mistrust and frustration that the negotiators did not commit to another high-level encounter.

Last week Iran told the I.A.E.A. at its headquarters in Vienna that it plans to install more sophisticated centrifuges at its principal nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz, enabling it to greatly accelerate processing of uranium.