"freeze for freeze" ... remains "the proposal on the table" ...

Politico, here

"The Obama Administration and its allies will insist that Iran’s vague offer to open negotiations be followed quickly with concrete actions to slow or halt its nuclear program, a senior administration official said. 

The official said an earlier proposal of a "freeze for freeze" — under which Iran would stop expanding its program for six weeks and suspend it entirely at the end of that period in exchange for a pause in moving toward new sanctions against Iran — remains the "the proposal we have on the table." 

Unlike the Bush Administration, the official said, the Obama Administration remains willing to talk to the Iranians without preconditions, and despite the fact that an the Iranian proposal was "not responsive" to American concerns about the nuclear program. 

The American reluctance to soften the Bush Administration’s offer or to weaken the talks’ goals may also be intended by the administration as a signal to Congress — where key members have vowed to try to move through legislation next month that would impose crippling U.S. sanctions on Iran — that despite its willingness to negotiate, this Administration has verifiable deliverables it expects in return. 

“For us, the measure is going to be: Are we affecting their nuclear program in a way that dramatically changes the path that it’s on?” the official said. 

The “freeze for freeze” formula was first proposed by European foreign policy chief Javier Solana last July, and reiterated by American officials this April 8.

The official acknowledged that the formula has lost some of its bite, as Iran is now thought to have thousands of centrifuges which could continue to enrich uranium during the six-week freeze period. “The freeze obviously is not as meaningful as it would have been,” the official said. But the official said the U.S. will not accept a mere freeze on expansion as a final goal. 

“The freeze for freeze is not an end in itself,” the official said. “The freeze for freeze is an interim step to suspension.”