Long-term accord sought for Iran

Iran and world powers embark on Tuesday on the herculean task of transforming their interim nuclear deal into a long-term accord satisfying all sides and silencing talk of war for good.

After a decade of failure and rising tensions, US President Barack Obama has put the chances of an agreement at "50-50", while Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has predicted "difficult" discussions.

Getting a deal could also help bear fruit in other areas, not least in the three-year-old Syrian civil war where Teheran has backed President Bashar al-Assad. The latest peace talks ended in acrimony in Geneva on Saturday.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday he was not optimistic about the nuclear talks with world powers, but was not opposed to them, the official news agency IRNA reported.

Speaking on the eve of the talks with world powers in Vienna, Khamenei told a large crowd in Iran's Azerbaijan province: "I have said before that ... I am not optimistic about the talks and it will not lead anywhere, but I am not opposed either."

The scheduled three-day meeting in Vienna between Iran and the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany - the so-called P5+1 - is the first in what is expected to be a series of tricky encounters in the coming months.

It comes after foreign ministers struck a breakthrough deal in Geneva on Nov 24 that saw Iran agree to curb for six months some of its nuclear activities in exchange for minor relief from sanctions.

That agreement, which came into force on Jan 20, extends the theoretical "break-out time" needed by Iran, which denies seeking the bomb, to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.

In return, Iran is due to get over the six months some $6 billion to $7 billion in sanctions relief, including $4.2 billion in assets frozen in overseas bank accounts. It was also promised no new sanctions.

But Iran's freeze is only temporary - although it can be extended - and the bulk of sanctions remain, continuing to deprive Iran of billions of dollars in oil revenues every week.

Under the "comprehensive" deal now being sought, which the parties aim to conclude and commence implementing by November, the powers will want Iran to scale back its activities permanently.

These might include closing the Fordo facility, slashing the number of centrifuges enriching uranium, cutting its stockpile of fissile material and altering a new reactor being built at Arak, diplomats say.

This, plus tighter UN inspections, would not entirely remove Iran's capability to get the bomb but it would make it substantially more difficult - "impossible", Obama said.

AFP-Reuters

(China Daily 02/18/2014 page11)