VIENNA, 22 December 2005 — Iranian and European negotiators tentatively agreed yesterday to meet for further talks next month, signaling a possible new start to negotiations meant to reduce fears that Tehran wants to make nuclear arms.
European negotiators, emerging from talks with their Iranian counterparts, announced that they would consult with their governments on resuming dialogue with Tehran over its atomic ambitions, including uranium enrichment — a possible pathway to nuclear weapons. Talks on the issue broke off in August after Iran ended a freeze on uranium conversion, a precursor to enrichment.
“Both sides set out their positions in an open and frank manner ... (and) agreed to consult with their respective leaderships with a view of holding another round of talks in January,” said Stanislas Laboulay, the senior negotiator for France.
He said those talks would be aimed at “agreeing on the framework of (further) negotiations”.
Few details were immediately available about the substance of yesterday’s talks. But they were significant in signaling a return to dialogue after months of growing nuclear tensions exacerbated by recent anti-Jewish comments from Iran’s president, EU criticism of Tehran’s human rights record and Western concerns about alleged Iranian support for terrorists. The main issue in Vienna, however, was Iran’s insistence that it has a right to enrich uranium, a technology that can produce either nuclear fuel or the fissile core of warheads.
Setting the tone for yesterday’s talks, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki insisted Iran has the right to control the entire cycle for producing fuel for a reactor, from extracting uranium to enriching it.
“We don’t want talks just for the sake of talks,” he told reporters in Tehran. “When we talk about nuclear technology to produce fuel for our reactors it means enrichment and having the complete nuclear fuel cycle.”
Still Laboulay suggested Iranian negotiators were moderate at the talks yesterday. Asked whether a proposal supported by the EU and the United States to move Iran’s enrichment program to Russia was off the table, he said: “They did not reject any plan.”
Iran’s enrichment ambitions are being viewed with suspicion because the country hid them from the world for nearly two decades before its secret nuclear program was revealed nearly three years ago. Since then, an IAEA probe has unearthed experiments, blueprints or equipment that either have “dual-use” applications or seem to have no nonmilitary function. That has further added to concerns, even though no firm evidence of a weapons program has been found.
