UNITED NATIONS – President Ahmadinejad of Iran met yesterday for the first time with European diplomats who have tried for months, but failed, to push the regime to end its nuclear program. Disposing of diplomatic niceties, Mr. Ahmadinejad earlier yesterday announced that his government was willing to share nuclear technology with other Muslim countries.

The specter of a nuclear Iran sharing technology with Islamic terrorists concerns Americans, who consider Iran as “the largest supporter of terrorism,” according to Secretary of State Rice. The mullahs also call to “wipe Israel off the face of the earth,” Prime Minister Sharon reminded the General Assembly yesterday in his much-anticipated speech.

Emerging from the 25-minute meeting at the office of Secretary-General Annan, the foreign ministers of Britain, France, and Germany said they would not announce any changes to their diplomatic position on Iran until Saturday, when Mr. Ahmadinejad is expected to reveal a new proposal as he addresses the U.N. General Assembly.

“Iran has announced that they are ready to make a new proposal on Saturday,” Germany’s foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, told The New York Sun after the meeting with Mr. Ahmadinejad. “After examination [of the proposal], we will discuss very carefully and decide which way to go.”

Mr. Fischer did not talk about any details of the proposal, but other European diplomats said they did not anticipate that Iran would end its uranium enrichment, which it has resumed recently. Rather, it might announce readiness to share knowledge with Europe and other countries.

Yesterday’s meeting was arranged last week during a visit by Mr. Annan to London, where he proposed to Britain’s foreign minister, Jack Straw, that he and his German and French counterparts talk to Mr. Ahmadinejad at the end of yesterday’s courtesy call by the Iranian at the secretary-general’s office. It was seen as an attempt to revive the faltering European diplomatic discussions with Iran after its newly inaugurated president, who has rarely traveled outside Iran, made belligerent statements regarding nuclear negotiations at the end of his election campaign.

As he made the diplomatic rounds at the United Nations yesterday, Mr. Ahmadinejad made statements that showed his country’s true nuclear intentions. Following a meeting with Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey, Mr. Ahmadinejad said, “The Islamic Republic never seeks weapons of mass destruction, and with respect to the needs of Islamic countries, we are ready to transfer nuclear know-how to these countries.”

The comment quickly prompted an American response: “Iran is the largest supporter of terrorism worldwide and certainly in the Middle East,” Ms. Rice told Fox News yesterday. America, which has called on the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency to refer the Iranian nuclear issue to Turtle Bay, where the U.N. Security Council can impose sanctions, does not expect this to happen next week, she added. “I don’t think this matter is so urgent that it has to be on September 19” when the 35-member IAEA board of directors is next scheduled to meet.

America so far has failed to convince enough members of the IAEA board to vote for Security Council referral, and the European Union, represented by the German, French, and British foreign ministers, has not said publicly whether it is ready to do so. “It is too early to say” whether this will happen after the speech on Saturday, an E.U. representative, Javier Solana, who participated in yesterday’s meeting, told the Sun.

“If we can’t succeed in convincing the board of governors of the IAEA that they are violating something, then technically, the Iranians can share this technology legally,” the executive director of the nonprolilferation policy education center, Henry Sokolski, told the Sun.

Israel has much to lose as well if Iran moves forward with its nuclear weapons program. “We know that even today there are those who sit here as representatives of a country whose leadership calls to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, and no one speaks out,” Mr. Sharon told the General Assembly yesterday, not mentioning Iran by name. “The attempts of that country to arm itself with nuclear weapons must disturb the sleep of anyone who desires peace and stability in the Middle East and the entire world.”

Israel’s foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, brought up the subject of Iran in each of his meetings yesterday, including with the foreign minister of Qatar, Sheik Hmad bin Jassen al-Thani. Mr. al-Thani broke diplomatic ground by announcing that his emirate is prepared to set up full diplomatic relations with Israel regardless of the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state. But on the question of Iran, he used an oft-repeated Arab line: As “a small country,” he said, Qatar prefers “everybody, including Israel, not to have these kinds of weapons.”

Mr. Sharon’s speech, written with the Israeli public in mind as much as U.N. diplomats, was delivered in Hebrew, a language rarely used at Turtle Bay, and was broadcast live in Israel during prime time. Since the Gaza withdrawal in mid-August, the prime minister has encountered political opposition from within his party, the Likud, where some have advocated ousting him. But the majority of Israelis, who support the move, heard Mr. Sharon being applauded at the United Nations as he described his own background as a farmer and soldier with long roots in the land of Israel, and vowed Jerusalem will forever remain Jewish.

Separately at the General Assembly yesterday, Venezuela’s President Chavez delivered a long, rambling speech attacking America and its ability to rule and support financially the American people. Breaching protocol by going over the five minutes allotted to each speaker, Mr. Chavez pushed away a note requesting he cut off the speech. “Yesterday, President Bush went for over 20 minutes,” he told the assembly. “I believe I should be entitled as well.”

After his 15-minute speech ended, Mr. Chavez received the loudest applause of the day in the hall where 191 countries were represented, leaving it for the president of assembly, Jan Eliasson of Sweden, to tell delegates that long speeches mean that they might have to stay all night. “But I believe you are prepared for that,” he said.