A picture taken on October 26, 2010 shows the Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran
VIENNA: Six world powers and Iran began talks yesterday in pursuit of a final settlement on Tehran’s contested nuclear programme in coming months despite caveats from both sides that a breakthrough deal may prove impossible.
Senior US and Iranian officials met separately for nearly 90 minutes on the sidelines of the negotiations in Vienna. Details were not given, but such bilateral talks were inconceivable before the 2013 election of Hassan Rowhani, a relative moderate, as president of Iran. US-Iranian dialogue is seen as crucial to any breakthrough nuclear agreement.
“We’re only at the very beginning of this process,” a diplomat said on condition of anonymity after US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman’s meeting with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi.
Sherman headed the US delegation, while Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Araqchi led Tehran’s negotiating team at the table with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man with the final say on all matters of state in the Islamic Republic, declared again on Monday that talks between Tehran and six world powers “will not lead anywhere” - while also reiterating that he did not oppose the delicate diplomacy.
Hours later a senior US administration official also tamped down expectations, telling reporters on Monday that it will be a “complicated, difficult and lengthy process” and “probably as likely that we won’t get an agreement as it is that we will”.
It is the first round of high-level negotiations since a November 24 interim deal that has seen Tehran curb some nuclear activities for six months in return for limited relief from sanctions to allow time for a long-term agreement to be hammered out.
The stakes are huge. If successful, the negotiations could help defuse many years of hostility between Iran and the West, ease the danger of a new war in the Middle East, transform power relationships in the region and open up vast new possibilities for Western businesses.
The talks — expected to last two or three days — began last morning at the United Nations complex in Vienna. The venue was to shift later to a luxury city centre hotel where the chief negotiators were staying.
Araqchi sounded upbeat about the initial 40-minute discussions but appeared to draw a line against Tehran’s ballistic missile programme being addressed in any future talks.
“We had good discussions ... and we are trying to set an agenda. If we can agree on an agenda in the next two to three days, it means we have taken the first step. And we will move forward based on that agenda,” he said. “This agenda ... will be about Iran’s nuclear programme and nothing else, nothing except Iran’s nuclear activities can be discussed.”
Despite his public scepticism about chances for a lasting accord with the West, Khamenei made clear Tehran was committed to continuing the negotiations between Iran and the six powers.
“What our officials started will continue. We will not renege. I have no opposition,” he told a crowd in the northern city of Tabriz on Monday.
REUTERS
