TEHRAN, July 1 (Xinhua) -- Iran's armed forces chief-of-staff Major General Hassan Firouzabadi said Wednesday that the European Union (EU) lacks its qualifications to hold nuclear talks with Iran, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

    "It (EU) has totally lost the competence and qualifications needed for holding any kind of talks with Iran (over the nuclear issue)" following its interference in the recent post-election unrest in Iran, Firouzabadi was quoted as saying.

    He called on the EU to apologize to Iran for its mistakes (of interference) before speaking of negotiations with Iran, according to the report.

    "We believe that they (EU) don't have the right to speak of negotiations before apologizing for their obvious mistakes and showing their regret in practice," he said.

    European Union foreign and security policy chief Javier Solana on Sunday said that the West hopes to restart talks with Iran on its nuclear program soon.

    "We would like very much that soon we would have the possibility to restart the multilateral talks with Iran on the important issue," Solana told reporters at an informal meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

    The EU will continue to say what it has to say about the Iranian government's behavior vis-a-vis the people, Solana said.

    The EU has repeatedly expressed concern about post-election violence against Iranian demonstrators and called on the Iranian authorities to respect freedom of expression.

    The foreign ministers of the Group of Eight (G8) major industrialized nations on Saturday confirmed their commitment to a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.

    They urged Iran to seize the opportunity to give diplomacy a chance to find a negotiated solution to the nuclear issue.

    The West suspects that Iran's nuclear program is intended for nuclear weapons. But Iran has claimed that it is for peaceful purposes only.