Iran has belittled the UN, US and European
sanctions and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday he would
return to long-frozen talks with world powers but on certain conditions
only, and not before the end of August.His foreign minister said
talks would start before then with the two countries with which it
agreed a nuclear fuel swap deal in May — echoing a UN-brokered pact that
Tehran backed out of late last year — and which voted against the UN
sanctions."There were some contacts with the foreign ministers of
the three countries (Iran, Turkey and Brazil)," Manouchehr Mottaki told a
news conference. "A joint meeting is on the agenda and we will announce
it in the coming one or two days."Iran has held no substantive
talks with world powers since the deal in principle on the fuel swap
struck with Russia, France and the United States in October.The pact
would have seen Iran sending 1.2 tons of low-enriched uranium (LEU) —
about 70 percent of its stockpile at the time — abroad in exchange for
specially processed fuel rods needed to keep the Tehran medical research
reactor running.In a turnabout, Iran agreed in talks in May with
Brazil and Turkey to part with 1.2 tons of LEU. But by then Iran's LEU
reserve had doubled in size, devaluing the swap's terms in Western eyes
since it would no longer divest Iran of enough LEU to prevent its use
for an atom bomb, if refined to high purity.So the May agreement
proved too little too late to prevent a new batch of punitive sanctions
from the United Nations, European Union and United States.Meanwhile,
Iran has increased suspicions abroad by launching enrichment up to a
level of 20 percent purity, asserting this will yield raw material for
making the reactor fuel rods without foreign help — but at the same time
advancing much of the way down the road toward weapons-grade
enrichment.Russia, which backed the US-led push for further
sanctions but has since complained about the United States and the
European Union issuing stricter unilateral measures, said on Tuesday it
wanted to get back to talks with Tehran.Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov said he wanted talks between Iran, the United States, Russia and
the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency focusing on providing
Iran with reactor fuel rods so it would need to escalate enrichment
itself."In the wake of the Brazilian and Turkish initiative, Russia,
along with the United States, approached the director of the IAEA and
proposed we arrange a meeting of technical experts from our three
countries, including Iran, to discuss the possibility of supplying fuel
for the experimental reactor in Iran, so that there will be no need for
Iran to enrich the uranium to a level of 20 percent," Lavrov said."I
hope very much that Iran will respond positively and that this will
help prevent the situation from deteriorating," he told reporters during
a visit to Israel, which considers Iran's nuclear campaign an
existential threat.On Monday, Russia complained to the UN Security
Council about what UN diplomats said was Germany's seizure of items
bound for a nuclear power plant in Iran, saying such moves were "not in
line" with UN rules. On June 19, French President Nicolas Sarkozy
told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that France was ready to talk
with Iran at the IAEA "without delay", using the Tehran declaration as a
basis for discussions.The West fears Iran's nuclear work is aimed
at developing the means to build bombs because of its history of secrecy
and restricting IAEA inspections. Tehran says it will be solely for
generating electricity and isotopes for medicine and farming.Ahmadinejad
has called on the major powers to "clarify" three things before talks
could resume: their attitude to Israel's alleged nuclear arsenal, their
stance on commitments to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and
whether they come to the table as Iran's friend or its enemy.The
world powers were likely to dismiss such conditions as irrelevant to the
main issue — Iran's refusal to negotiate limits and transparency with
respect to its nuclear activity.
