| |
GENEVA : Attempts to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear programme have made "insufficient" progress, the EU's diplomatic chief Javier Solana said Saturday following high-level talks in Geneva.
"There is always progress in these talks, but insufficient," and the international community was still waiting for Iran's response to a proposed package of incentives for Tehran to give up its nuclear programme, he said.
"It was a constructive meeting, but still we didn't get the answer to our questions," said Solana.
"We refrain from Security Council resolutions and (call) for Iran to refrain from nuclear activity including the installations of new centrifuges" for processing uranium, he said after the talks.
"We are looking forward to an answer from Iran in this question... in a couple of weeks."
Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili described the talks as "constructive and progressing," in comments to reporters afterwards.
He added that "on the manner of continuing the negotiations we have understood better our mutual positions."
"There are points in common and points that are not in common," Jalili said. "We have agreed to discuss this."
Iranian, European and US officials including US State Department official William Burns, held talks in Geneva's historic Town Hall as part of a bid to resolve a long-running dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme.
Western countries suspect Iran is secretly trying to develop a nuclear bomb and the United Nations has imposed several sets of sanctions against Tehran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.
Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons, insisting that its programme is designed to provide energy for its growing population for the time when its reserves of fossil fuels run out.
World powers have offered to start pre-negotiations during which Tehran would add no more uranium-enriching centrifuges and in return face no further sanctions -- the so-called "freeze-freeze" approach.
Earlier Saturday, Solana and Jalili had lunch together while Burns ate separately with other officials from the so-called "P5 plus 1" group negotiating with Iran -- the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany, sources said.
On the European side, Solana's spokeswoman Christina Gallach said earlier that "the basis for successful negotiations is very substantial.
"We are very flexible about how to work towards our expectations... we are ready to look at creative manners that allow negotiations to start," Gallach added.
The attendance of Burns, the number three official at the State Department, marks a major policy shift by Washington, which has not had any diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980 following the Islamic Revolution.
"It's up to him to choose his attitude," Gallach said, but added that his presence was a "strong signal of the US support for a negotiated solution."
The United States insisted last week that Burns was travelling to Geneva just to listen to Iran's response and not negotiate.
In London, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband hailed Burns's attendance as a strong signal of the West's determination to arrive at a negotiated solution.
"The message to Iran is simple: get serious about the real needs of your people, which are for a serious response to year on year diminution in their standard of living, and abandon the fiction that the world is pursuing a vendetta against you," he wrote in a blog on his ministry's website.
- AFP /ls
|
