Tehran: The six world powers negotiating with
Iran over its contested nuclear programme have accepted
Tehran's conditions for the talks, the country's chief
negotiator said in a report on Wednesday.
"They joined the talks maintaining their own view,
but Iran said the talks should continue based on Iran's
conditions. So they have shown serious change," Saeed Jalili
said of the talks that resumed this week.
"We frankly asked that talks should be for the sake
of cooperation, and they accepted. If they remain committed to
this agreement, then the talks have been successful," he said
in an interview carried on state television's website.
After a 14-month break, the talks on the Islamic
republic's nuclear programme resumed in Geneva this week, with
an agreement to meet again in Istanbul at the end of January
despite clear differences.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said after
the two days of talks ended yesterday that it was agreed to
hold the Istanbul talks to "discuss practical ideas and ways
of cooperating towards the resolution of our core concerns
about the nuclear issue."
Barely an hour later, however, Jalili said both
sides agreed only to further "talks based on cooperation" and
that everything else was "not true."
Iran is under four sets of UN sanctions over its
refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, the sensitive process
which can be used to make nuclear fuel or, in highly extended
form, the fissile core of an atom bomb.
Tehran rejects suspicions by the West and Israel
that its uranium enrichment programme masks a covert bid to
acquire nuclear weapons, maintaining it is developing nuclear
technology for solely peaceful purposes.
PTI
First Published: Wednesday, December 08, 2010, 19:24