EU Official Readies for Iran Nuclear Talks

A senior European Union official expressed hope yesterday that talks with Iran tomorrow could help unblock the impasse over the country’s nuclear program, Reuters reported (see GSN, April 23).

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and lead Iranian nuclear diplomat Ali Larijani are scheduled to meet tomorrow in Ankara, Turkey, for the first time since the U.N. Security Council imposed a new batch of economic sanctions against Tehran last month.

“I don't have any guarantee that it's going to be a success, but I don't have a guarantee that it's going to be a failure,” Solana told reporters in Luxembourg yesterday. 

“I thought the situation has sufficiently matured to try again,” he said (Reuters/New York Times, April 23).

A former Iranian diplomat also held out some hope for progress, saying that Larijani had been received “authority for compromise” from Iran’s top leaders, the Financial Times reported yesterday.

Sadegh Kharrazi, who served as Iran’s ambassador to France before being pulled by current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, suggested that Larijani had the backing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to the Financial Times (Gareth Smyth, Financial Times, April 23).

Ahmadinejad, however, yesterday reaffirmed Iran’s refusal to suspend its nuclear activities as demanded by the Security Council.

“Iran has entered the nuclear club and (the West) should accept it,” he told Reuters.  He said Iran would reject any offer to freeze its uranium enrichment program in exchange for a suspension of U.N. sanctions.

“Iran will not accept it because the sanctions are not legal, so you cannot ask a country to suspend its legal activities in return for a suspension of an illegal move.”

Meanwhile, the European acted to bolster Solana’s bargaining hand by formally approving the new Security Council sanctions.  EU ministers expanded an earlier list of Iranian individuals and firms subject to having their assets frozen and they imposed a total arms embargo against Iran, Reuters reported (Reuters/New York Times).

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