ISTANBUL: US Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday world powers would pursue further talks with Iran to resolve a decade-old dispute over its nuclear programme, but stressed the process could not go on forever.
The six powers and Iran failed again to bridge wide differences at weekend talks in Kazakhstan, prolonging a stand-off that could yet erupt into a new Middle East war. No new talks were scheduled.
“This is not an interminable process,” said Kerry after arriving in Istanbul yesterday on the first leg of a 10-day trip to the Middle East, Europe and Asia.
He said US President Barack Obama was committed to continuing the diplomatic process despite what he called the complicating factor of an Iranian presidential election in June.
“Diplomacy is a painful task ... and a task for the patient,” Kerry told a news conference.
Big powers suspect Iran is trying to develop the means to produce nuclear weapons under the guise of a declared civilian atomic energy programme. Iran denies the accusation.
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz urged the powers yesterday to set a deadline of weeks for military action to persuade Iran to halt its uranium enrichment activity.
Steinitz, close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Army Radio action should be taken within “a few weeks, a month” if Iran did not stop work of possible use in yielding a nuclear bomb, which Israel sees as a potential threat to its existence.
Tehran accuses Israel of threatening peace in the region and refuses to recognise the Jewish state, which is widely believed to harbour the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who represents the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany in talks with Iran, said the two sides failed to resolve key differences during the two-day talks in Almaty.
“... It is important to continue to talk and to try to find common ground,” Kerry said. “So we hope that out of Almaty will come a narrowing of some of the differences. We remain open and hopeful that a diplomatic solution can be found.” The six powers want the Islamic Republic to suspend its higher-grade uranium enrichment work in return for modest relief from international sanctions, an offer Iran did not accept.
Iran’s most powerful figure, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last say on all state matters, has shown no sign of willingness to scale back Iran’s nuclear activity.
“As a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has the right to enrich uranium ... The Islamic Republic will never stop its enrichment work,” the head of parliament’s Foreign Affairs and National Security Committee, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, said, according to Iran’s ISNA news agency.
REUTERS
