Europeans meet Iran on nuclear row
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-09-16 09:08

Three European powers revived talks with Iran, holding lengthy discussions on the sidelines of a UN summit to try to head off a showdown over Tehran's nuclear program, AFP reported.

Foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany met with their Iranian counterpart and later conferred briefly with the Islamic Republic's new president in a diplomatic push brokered by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The talks came four days before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was to meet in Vienna to discuss seeking possible UN action against Iran for resuming suspected nuclear weapons activities.

"We had a very thorough exchange of the different positions of the EU-3 and the new government of Iran," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said after the 80-minute session with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said the ministers had a "very frank discussion" in the first talks between Iran and the so-called EU-3 since a May 25 session in Geneva.

The ministers later sat down with Iran's new president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who planned to unveil what Tehran called new proposals to resolve the standoff in a speech Saturday.

"We're going to listen carefully to what the president has to say and we'll take it from there," Straw said afterwards.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who also attended the meeting with Ahmadinejad, stressed there were no actual negotiations.

"We have only prepared the ground," Solana said. "If it is possible to continue? .... it's not clear yet. We have to wait until the speech."

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer speaks to the press after his meeting with his British, German and Iranian counterparts in a bid to difuse tensions over Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons program at the United Nations in New York on the sidelines of the 60th session of the United Nations General Assembly.[AFP]

Douste-Blazy insisted the EU-3 strategy had always been to avoid involving the Security Council, but added that the next step would depend on how far Ahmadinejad's speech goes in addressing the Europeans' concerns.

"If there's no movement, no change ... it's not at all impossible that there will be a referral to the Council," he said.

Annan organized the meeting between Iran and the EU-3, which have been trying for nearly two years to wean Tehran off its suspected nuclear arms ambitions with economic and security incentives.

Iran agreed to suspend sensitive uranium enrichment activities last November under the so-called Paris agreement. But Tehran resumed its fuel-cycle work in August after angrily rejecting the latest EU-3 offer.

The United States has been lobbying for world support to haul Iran before the UN Security Council for possible sanctions but has signaled it may not have enough backing when the IAEA board convenes Monday.

"If we get a referral (of Iran) on September 19th, that will be good, but I think the issue of a referral is something that we'll be working for a while," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Fox News executives Wednesday.

Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, issued a new defense of his country's nuclear program as purely peaceful in bilateral talks Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

"The Islamic Republic in no way seeks weapons of mass destruction," he was quoted as saying by the official Iranian news agency, IRNA.

There was no precise word on the substance of the proposals that Iranian officials said Ahmadinejad would unveil at a weekend session of the UN General Assembly following the summit.

But officials in Tehran have already indicated it would involve Iran maintaining its sensitive nuclear fuel activities while pledging to comply with UN inspectors from the IAEA.

Ahmadinejad met Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has made it clear that Moscow does not support Security Council intervention in the nuclear impasse.

Russia is building a nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Iran, a move that has sparked concerns in the United States and other Western countries that accuse Iran of seeking to secretly build nuclear weapons.

Putin and Ahmadinejad spoke in general terms of cooperation between their two countries but made no specific mention of the nuclear dispute.

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