EU calls for direct US-Iran talks

Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, says Tehran is ready to talk.

Solana, right, will reconvene talks with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator in two weeks time [AFP]
Iran engagement
 
Solana said: “It is very difficult to continue in a situation where Iran is considered a country with whom you cannot organise some sort of dialogue. I think that would be good. I am going to be talking to Washington in the next few days about that.”
 
He was speaking after two days of talks with Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, who he said was close to Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
 

Asked if he believed Khamenei was ready to allow talks with the United States, Solana answered, “I say without any hesitation, yes.”

 

Solana said he would discuss the matter with Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, on Sunday.

 

US ‘stuck’

 

“We appreciate the good work of the EU and our EU3 partners and their efforts to get Iran to comply with the international community”

Gordon Johndroe, White House National Security Council spokesman

Daniel Fried, the US assistant secretary of state, who was in the audience, said Solana and Rice had already had a long conversation on the matter on Thursday so “they are in very close touch about this”.

 

Fried said he could not announce any change in the US policy of refusing direct contact with Iran until it halts its most sensitive nuclear work – uranium enrichment, which can be used to fuel power stations or make atomic weapons.

 

“Our position at the moment is well known,” he said, acknowledging that the US stance had failed to induce Tehran to suspend enrichment, “so we’re stuck.”

 

In Washington, Gordon Johndroe, White House National Security Council spokesman, said the United States “has offered to have talks with Iran for the first time in 27 years if they will suspend their enrichment and reprocessing activity.”

 

Johndroe said: “We appreciate the good work of the EU and our EU3 partners and their efforts to get Iran to comply with the international community.”

 

While nothing definitive resulted from Solana’s talks with Larijani, which will reconvene in two weeks time, the overall tone was that they had been constructive and might be a route to resolving the stand-off.

 

Nuclear energy ‘right’

 

The core dispute is Iran‘s insistence on a right to a sovereign nuclear energy industry against a UN demand that it halt all such activity to win a suspension of sanctions against it and launch negotiations leading to trade benefits for Tehran.

 

Senior officials of the six big powers – the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany – and the EU are to meet in London next week to review the Solana-Larijani dialogue and discuss whether a third, tougher sanctions resolution might be needed.

 

Solana said he still had between 30 and 45 days in which to achieve a breakthrough with Larijani, failing which the UN Security Council would have to adopt a third resolution.

 

Some diplomats and analysts say Iran and the six world powers handling Iran‘s atomic file may eventually need to accept a partial enrichment freeze under strict UN inspections to overcome the deadlock. But both sides have publicly denied this.

 

Solana said suspending enrichment remained the condition for starting formal negotiations with Tehran, but as a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Iran would be entitled to a full civil nuclear programme once it allayed legitimate suspicions.

 

Analysts say the key to resolving the crisis is finding a definition of an enrichment suspension both sides can stomach. This could, for example, mean suspending uranium fuel production but exempting the building or testing of centrifuge machines.

Source: News Agencies