Disappointed Ashton says no new Iran talks planned

ISTANBUL (Agencies)

The chief negotiator for the six world powers, Catherine Ashton, said Saturday she was
“disappointed” with the outcome of nuclear talks with Iran, adding that no new talks have been scheduled. After the conclusion of the two-day crunch meeting of the U.N. Security Council permanent members plus Germany with Iran in Istanbul, Ashton told reporters, “I am disappointed.” She said that “no new talks have been planned,” between the world powers and Tehran on the Islamic republic’s controversial nuclear drive. “It remains essential that Iran demonstrates that its nuclear program is peaceful,” she added.

Talks will resume but no date or venue has been set, a senior Iranian official said on Saturday.

“There will be talks but stilll we haven’t decided on the place or venue,” Abolfazl Zohrevand, an aide to Iran’s chief negotiator Saeed Jalili, told Reuters at the end of two days of talks in Istanbul between the world powers and Iran.

Jalili also said that Iran has the right to uranium enrichment, and that world powers should respect Iran’s choice.

And according to Istanbul, Jalili said that any agreement with world powers should be based on Iran’s rights to nuclear fuel cycle.

World powers began a second and final day of talks with Iran on Saturday, having made scant progress toward persuading the Islamic Republic to curb its nuclear program on the first day of the meeting in Istanbul.

Jalili met with representatives from the P5+1 group of Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany, led by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, on Friday.

It was the second round of talks between Iran and the powers after talks resumed last month in Geneva, breaking a 14-month hiatus in diplomatic efforts to dispel concerns that Tehran is secretly developing an atomic bomb.

“We will absolutely not allow the talks to go into the issue of our basic rights like the issue of suspending enrichment,” Abolfazl Zohrevand, an aide to Jalili, said.

He insisted however the talks were held in a “positive” climate.

But Western officials reported little progress, saying both sides had stuck to their positions.

“They talked a lot but the positions remain the same… It would be fair to say that the bilateral (meeting) was inconclusive,” a diplomat, who requested anonymity, said after Ashton and Jalili met for an hour and a half.

The Iranians, he said, insisted on two pre-conditions to engage in talks on a nuclear fuel swap proposal, aimed at easing suspicions over Tehran’s nuclear activities.

They are demanding recognition of their right to enrich uranium and the lifting of international sanctions, he said. The powers rejected any preconditions in the talks, he added.

Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful, but has refused to suspend uranium enrichment, the sensitive process which can be used to make nuclear fuel or, in highly extended form, the fissile core of an atomic bomb.

Tehran has ignored Security Council resolutions demanding it suspend enrichment, with trade and other benefits offered in return, and refused to grant unfettered access for U.N. nuclear inspectors.

Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West has escalated in the past year, with the United Nations imposing new sanctions and Western states rejecting a revised proposal for Iran to swap some of its fuel abroad as too little, too late.

	The West has got to get out of this wretched posture of apology for believing we are causing what these Iranians are doing, or what these extremists are doing. We are not
former British PM Tony Blair

Fuel swap deal

The Western official said the nuclear fuel swap proposal “was not specifically put on the table but was discussed in a very nuanced way” Friday.

The powers are looking for a deal on an updated version of the proposal, first discussed in 2009, “as a starting point to build confidence and get the process done,” he said.

Under the original draft, Iran would have received fuel for a medical research reactor in Tehran from France and Russia in return for shipping out most of its stockpiles of low-enriched uranium.

After a prolonged stalemate, Brazil and Turkey brokered a modified deal with Iran in May.

But the United States rejected the accord, arguing it had failed to take into account additional uranium Iran enriched in the meantime, and led the U.N. Security Council in imposing a fourth package of sanctions.

Meanwhile former British prime minister Tony Blair, now Middle East peace envoy, sounded a warning that the world should use force if needed to stem the Islamic republic’s nuclear ambitions.

Blair condemned Iran’s influence in the region as “negative” and “destabilizing”.

“Iraq is one part of a far bigger picture and right across that region, people are facing that struggle,” he said.

“This is a looming and coming challenge,” he said. “At some point, we’ve got to get our head out of the sand.

“The West has got to get out of this wretched posture of apology for believing we are causing what these Iranians are doing, or what these extremists are doing. We are not.”

Blair also said U.S. President Barack Obama’s approach to Tehran was failing

“They carry on with the terrorism, they carry on with the destabilisation, they carry on with the nuclear weapons,” he said.

“They’ll carry on doing it unless they are met by the requisite determination and if necessary, force.”