TEHRAN/VIENNA, 24 December 2005 — The European Union and Iran are to hold new nuclear talks on Jan. 18, diplomats said in Vienna yesterday, confirming the actual date for a meeting announced on Wednesday.
“The meeting will be on Jan. 18 in Vienna,” said a Middle Eastern diplomat close to the talks, in which the West is asking Iran to cease nuclear fuel work in order to guarantee that it will not make atomic weapons.
The EU and Iran Wednesday restarted talks that had broken off last August when Tehran began uranium conversion, the first step in making enriched uranium that can be nuclear reactor fuel or atom bomb material. Another diplomat, who like the first asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the issue, said that the European Union and its backer, the United States, had wanted the meeting to be held in the second half of January.
Tehran’s newly appointed Friday prayer leader said that his countrymen will defend their country’s right to nuclear technology to their last drop of blood after talks with the European Union was revived two days ago.
“The Westerners should know that during the eight years of imposed war — the Iran-Iraq War 1980-88 — we did not give up an inch of our land so in the matter of nuclear energy they should know that our people will defend it to their last drop of blood,” Hojatoeslam Ahmad Khatami said in his sermon broadcast live on state radio.
Khatami, a member of the Assembly of Experts — the body which selects the supreme leader and supervises his activities — was appointed by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei less than a week ago. “We are not any seeking special status for ourselves, nor we will accept any oppression. As the signatory of Non-Proliferation Treaty we have been committed to it, and according to it we have rights and we will not give up our legitimate right,” he added.
Meanwhile, Iran also played down an order by Ahmadinejad to ban Western music on state television, saying he had only made “recommendations” against “immoral” music. “What was approved by President Ahmadinejad in the cultural council were recommendations not to play any immoral kind of music,” Javad Ariamanesh, a member of the cultural council, told the news agency ILNA.
Ariamanesh said that the main aim is to expand Iranian rather than Western music, and also pay attention to Iranian-style pop music. He added that IRIB has been recommended not to go to extremes, referring to some techno music occasionally heard on the state network. There had been press reports earlier this week that Western music on state television network IRIB was being banned by Ahmadinejad.
