"There is a channel of dialogue with the Iranians" that must pass through EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, a spokesman for the French foreign ministry said.
"It’s through this channel we await a response from the Iranians on the suspension" of uranium enrichment, as demanded by the UN Security Council, spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei told reporters.
He said the Iranian proposal, made on French radio earlier Tuesday by the deputy director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammad Saeedi, was "unexpected".
If the Iranians agreed to suspend uranium enrichment, Mattei said, "there could be place for negotiations where each side can make whatever proposals it wishes."
The French reaction came as Solana said in Finland he was "interested" by the Iranian offer to the French, but added he needed to study the idea more closely.
Saeedi, in his interview with France Info radio, suggested the French consortium idea as a way to break a deadlock over Iran’s nuclear programme.
"To be able to reach a solution, we have just had an idea. We propose that France create a consortium for the production in Iran of enriched uranium," he said.
"That way France, through its Eurodif and Areva companies, can monitor our activities in a tangible fashion."
Iran ignored an August 31 deadline set by the UN Security Council for halting enrichment, and foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini on Sunday reaffirmed Tehran’s refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment program after EU-Iran talks last week failed to reach any compromise.
Earlier this year, Russia had proposed allowing Iran to enrich uranium on Russian soil as a way out of the standoff, but despite a flurry of talks Tehran never embraced the idea with enthusiasm and eventually rejected it.
Saaedi’s proposal appears to contain the key difference that enrichment should be done by foreign firms on Iranian soil, meeting Tehran’s constant demand that it will never surrender its right to enrichment in Iran.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had suggested in a speech to the United Nations in New York in September 2005 that foreign countries could help Iran to enrich uranium on its soil.
He said at the time the "further confidence-building measure" was to "engage in serious partnership with private and public sectors of other countries in the implementation of the uranium-enrichment program in Iran."
However key global players in the Iranian nuclear dispute such as France and Russia reacted at the time with scepticism to the offer.
The West is urging Iran to freeze uranium enrichment — a process that can be used to make both nuclear fuel and the explosive core of a nuclear bomb — in return for a package of economic and diplomatic rewards.
Iran says its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful energy needs, vehemently rejecting US allegations it is seeking to manufacture nuclear weapons.
Washington has pressed its Security Council allies to use sanctions to increase the pressure on Tehran, but has met stiff resistance, notably from Russia and China.