Iran and six world powers put nuclear talks back on track at a landmark session that included the highest-level bilateral contact with the US in years and a pledge to meet again this month.
US President Barack Obama then challenged Tehran to make good on its promises quickly.
Iran also agreed on Thursday to allow UN inspectors into its covertly built enrichment plant during the talks, held at a villa outside Geneva. The discussions appeared to defuse tensions that had been building for weeks.
Speaking in Washington, Obama called the talks “a constructive beginning” and said Iran must match its words with action.
Tehran “must grant unfettered access” to international inspectors within two weeks, he said, warning that if Iran fails to follow through, “then the United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely and we are prepared to move towards increased pressure.”
“Our patience is not unlimited,” Obama said. “Going forward, we expect to see swift action.”
The tone of Thursday’s meeting was considerably more positive than just a week ago, when the US and its allies were threatening Iran with tough new sanctions if it refused to freeze its nuclear activities, which they suspect are aimed at creating an atomic weapon.
Perhaps the most significant development of the day was a 45 minute one-on-one meeting between US Under Secretary of State William Burns and Iran’s senior nuclear negotiator, Saaed Jalili. It was the first direct US negotiations with Iran since Washington severed relations in 1980.
The encounter appeared to add to the positive atmosphere that led to agreement by all the parties — Iran, the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — for a follow-up meeting this month.
It also appeared to be concrete proof of Obama’s commitment to engage Iran directly on nuclear and other issues — a sharp break from policy under the Bush administration.
Statements made by the two sides, however, reflected the continuing divide between them.
US Deputy State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Burns used the meeting “to reiterate the international community’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. He addressed the need for Iran to take concrete and practical steps that ... will build international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its program.”
Wood said both sides also “had a frank exchange on other issues, including human rights.”
Officials in Washington said Burns urged Tehran to resolve the cases of three Americans detained in Iran since July.
Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, told reporters Iran agreed to “cooperate fully” with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to open its newly disclosed nuclear facility to inspectors, probably within “a couple of weeks.”
In a statement, the IAEA said agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei had been invited to Iran to discuss nuclear issues. A senior US official said ElBaradei would travel to Tehran this weekend. He spoke on condition of anonymity because his information was confidential.
ElBaradei recently said Tehran was “on the wrong side of the law” over its new enrichment plant near the Shiite holy city of Qom. He said Iran should have revealed its plans as soon as it decided to build the facility.
Western officials said Iran also agreed to send some of its enriched uranium to Russia to further process the material for use in a research reactor in Tehran. It was a long-sought compromise because Iran has repeatedly refused to involve an outside country, insisting it has the right to a full domestic enrichment program.
Obama said such a step would help build international confidence.
“We support Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear power,” Obama said. “Taking the step of transferring its low-enriched uranium to a third country would be a step toward building confidence that Iran’s program is in fact peaceful.”
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS