TEHRAN, October 14 (RIA Novosti) - Iran is urging the United States to stop employing double standards and realistically assess the situation around the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, the IRNA news agency reported on Wednesday.

IRNA referred to Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki's response to a statement by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who said at a Tuesday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow that sanctions against the Islamic Republic were not inevitable, the Iranian agency reported.

"The positions of Mrs. Clinton are at odds with the present-day reality of the negotiations [with the Iran Six on Iran's nuclear program] in Geneva and their results. Such approaches have double standards," IRNA quoted the foreign minister as saying.

"Tehran proposes that Mrs. Clinton look at things realistically and refrain from the unproductive slogans and exhortations of the previous Bush administration," Mottaki said.

Iran has been in the center of a protracted international dispute over its nuclear program, which it maintains is exclusively civilian in nature but Western nations fear could lead to the production of weapons-grade material.

Tehran is under three sets of UN Security Council sanctions over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment that could be used both for electricity generation and weapons production.