The Financial Times
Ira nuclear talks yield downbeat mood
By Charles Clover in Moscow, James Blitz in London and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran June 18, 2012
Iran engaged in “intense and tough” exchanges with the US and other world powers as a third round of negotiations between the two sides began on Monday amid fears a peaceful resolution to the stand-off over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions will prove elusive.
Iran will meet senior diplomats from the European Union and six world powers again on Tuesday to see if confidence-building measures can be agreed that would avert a conflict over the Iranian programme.
But on Monday night the mood among diplomats on all sides was downbeat, after signs that both Iran and the international community had not been prepared to make compromises on the first day of the two-day negotiating round.
“We had an intense and tough exchange of views,” said Michael Mann, a spokesman for EU policy chief Lady Ashton, who is co-ordinating the negotiations with Iran.
Mr Mann said the discussions on Monday were more substantive than they had been at a meeting last month in Baghdad.
He added: “Iran engaged in detail on our proposal but not in a way we would like them to.”
His pessimism was echoed by Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, who said after the conclusion of talks on Monday that he hoped there would be a new rounds of talks, implying that he did not envisage a breakthrough.
Mr Ryabkov said the main stumbling block so far had been the “complexity” and “incompatibility” of the various delegations’ positions.
“The best we can hope for from this round of talks is the appointment of a new round, in a month, in some other city said Vladimir Sazhin, an Iran expert at Moscow’s Institute of Oriental Studies. “No big success can be expected in Moscow because the positions are mutually exclusive. If the Moscow negotiations end with no new round ... there can be almost no chance for a peaceful diplomatic solution”
A member of the Iranian delegation added to the grim mood, saying that the talks “do not have the most positive atmosphere” and adding that “the second day of talks are likely to be the most significant”.
Saeed Jaleeli, the Iranian chief negotiator, was due to attend a dinner on Monday night with Nikolai Patrushev, chairman of Russia’s National Security Council and a close confidant of President Vladimir Putin.
News of the meeting prompted speculation that Mr Patrushev would put fresh pressure on Mr Jaleeli to accept a deal before the negotiations wind up on Tuesday.
As diplomats met in Moscow, a report on state-controlled Iranian television said that Iran would not consider curtailing the enrichment of uranium to 20 per cent – a goal for international mediators – unless the six powers acknowledged that Tehran had the right to enrich uranium and lifted sanctions.
Iran has long sought these two concessions in exchange for curtailing its enrichment of uranium at 20 per cent, but they go far beyond what the six major powers have proposed.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, issued a tacit warning to western powers attending the talks, declaring that “in dealing with the Iranian nation, stubbornness, arrogance, self-conceit and irrelevant expectations ... will go nowhere”.
At the conclusion of Monday’s talks, an EU diplomat said that Iran had “ responded to our package of proposals from Baghdad but, in doing so, brought up lots of questions and well-known positions, including past grievances. We agreed to reflect overnight on each others’ positions.”
The west has imposed increasingly severe sanctions on Iran over its nuclear activities, including an oil embargo that began on July 1.
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