UN tries to pin down Iran in nuclear talks
Iran and six world powers today sought to find common ground at talks including Tehran’s nuclear programme.
The discussions in Turkey were jeopardised by Iran’s refusal to discuss demands that it curb activities that could manufacture the fissile core of nuclear warheads.
Meeting the Iranians are the five permanent UN Security Council members – the US, Russia, China, Britain and France – plus Germany.
The two sides sat down with no sign that they were ready to budge from widely differing positions revealed after a first round of talks in Geneva last month.
While the six would like to kick-start talks focused at freezing Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, Tehran has repeatedly said that activity is not up for discussion. Instead, Iranian officials are pushing an agenda that covers just about everything except its nuclear programme: global disarmament, Israel’s suspected nuclear arsenal, and Tehran’s concerns about US military bases in Iraq and elsewhere in the region.
“We want to discuss the fundamental problems of global politics at Istanbul talks,” said Iranian chief negotiator Saeed Jalili, while President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggested any push to restrict the meeting to Iran’s nuclear programme would fail.
“They employed all their might and tried hard to prevent Iran from going nuclear,” Iranian state TV quoted Mr Ahmadinejad as saying. “But Iran went nuclear and there will be no way back.”
A diplomat familiar with the talks says the six powers will seek to nudge Iran toward acknowledging the need to reduce worries that the Islamic Republic might turn its enrichment programme to making weapons.
Tehran denies such aspirations, insisting it wants only to make nuclear fuel. But concerns have grown because its uranium enrichment programme could also make fissile warhead material, because of its nuclear secrecy and also because it refuses to co-operate with attempts to investigate suspicions that it ran experiments related to making nuclear weapons.
Iran came to the table warning that it was in no mood to compromise.
“Resolutions, sanctions, threats, computer virus nor even a military attack will stop uranium enrichment in Iran,” Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, told state TV.
The enrichment programme has sparked UN Security Council sanctions, been targeted by the Stuxnet malware virus – thought to have been manufactured by Israel or the US – and has provoked the threat of military strikes from both America and Israel.
Ahead of the start of Friday’s session, the diplomat said EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, speaking on behalf of Iran’s six interlocutors, would urge the Iranian side in her opening address to recognise the need to discuss international concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme.
