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Progress Needed in Nuclear Talks, Iran Warns EU
Iran must see “tangible progress” in senior-level nuclear negotiations set to begin April 29 with the European Union if the talks are to continue, a top Iranian official said in a Financial Times article published today (see GSN, April 18). Iran would move ahead with talks for a few more months if France, Germany and the United Kingdom allow Tehran’s latest proposal — that it be permitted to maintain some enrichment activities — to become “a basis” for the negotiations, Iranian nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani told the Times. “The Europeans should tell us whether these ideas can work as the basis for continued negotiations or not. If yes, fine. If not, then the negotiations cannot continue,” Rohani said. “These ideas are the very last possible ideas that we could come up with as compromise options.” Any concessions on uranium enrichment, however, would likely undermine U.S. backing for the negotiations, according to Western diplomats. A breakdown in negotiations would probably end a uranium enrichment suspension accepted by Tehran last year as a means of heading off referral to the U.N. Security Council, according to the Times. “For our dossier to be sent to the Security Council would be a great failure on the part of Europe, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and multilateralism as a whole,” said Rohani (Khalaf/Smyth, Financial Times, April 20). Technical negotiations between Iran and the European Union began yesterday in Geneva and were expected to conclude today, Agence France-Presse reported. The proposal tabled by Iran includes “assembly, installation and testing of 3,000 centrifuges in Natanz,” where Iran has already built a pilot enrichment project of 164 centrifuges, according to text read to AFP by a diplomat close to the talks. The diplomat disputed the characterization of the Iranian proposal as a pilot project. “This isn’t a pilot enrichment plant they are seeking, it’s larger than that,” the diplomat said (Michael Adler, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, April 20).
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