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US, Iran come closer at meet

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-10-02 07:47

GENEVA: A US envoy held one-on-one talks with Iran's top nuclear negotiator for the first time Thursday during a meeting with five other world powers hoping to convince Teheran to freeze its atomic drive.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili (R) and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana arrive for a meeting on nuclear power of Iran in Geneva October 1, 2009. [Agencies]

Iran's top nuclear negotiator met officials from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany in a villa overlooking Lake Geneva only a week after a new secret Iranian uranium enrichment plant was disclosed.

The US envoy at the talks, William Burns, also met separately with Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili, in a rare official encounter between the two nations, a US spokesman said.

An official attending Iran's talks said Burns and Jalili held a "significant conversation". The official was speaking on condition of anonymity.

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The bilateral meeting is the most high-level US-Iranian contact in three decades, since Washington severed relations with Teheran during a hostage crisis in the wake of Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979.

US State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood refused to reveal details of the encounter, but it highlights the new US engagement policy favored by President Barack Obama since he succeeded George W. Bush in January.

The international powers have urged Iran to give the International Atomic Energy Agency access to the previously secret nuclear site near the holy city of Qom.

The talks with the UN Security Council's five permanent members and Germany provide Iran an opportunity to come clean about its nuclear ambitions, Wood said.

But he warned that US patience has its limits. "This is the first time that we've agreed to sit down with Iran as a full member of the P5+1 discussions," he told journalists. "We're willing to engage in this process but we're not going to do it forever. There's going to come a point when we're not going to engage," he said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Iran on the eve of the talks that it risks "greater isolation and international pressure" if it refuses to give access to nuclear facilities and freeze sensitive activities.

French Defense Minister Herve Morin said his country would press for new sanctions against Iran if it fails to clear up nuclear suspicions by December.

Iran denies it is seeking a bomb and says its nuclear activities are for peaceful power generation. But the UN Security Council has already imposed three sets of sanctions on Iran for refusing to end its uranium enrichment.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he hoped a breakthrough could be reached in Geneva to avoid sanctions. "Sometimes they are useful but we are not talking about the sanctions in Geneva so far," he said.

'Talks a waste of time'

Israel's vice-prime minister Silvan Shalom dismissed the talks as a "waste of time," saying Iran would never give up its alleged bid to acquire nuclear weapons. He called for "real" sanctions.

The talks between Iran's top nuclear negotiator and the international envoys are the first since Obama took office.

The Iranians began the meeting by reiterating that the nuclear standoff was part of a wider range of issues that need to be addressed, "but at least they were talking nuclear towards the end of the morning," a Western diplomat said.

The United States wants Iran to respond to an international offer to suspend sanctions in exchange for Iran halting nuclear enrichment.