Leading international powers may reach an agreement within weeks on a third UN resolution imposing sanctions on Iran because of its nuclear program, a French diplomat said after talks in Paris on Saturday.
While Saturday's closed-door talks produced no firm decision, the official said a compromise text on a new resolution would be circulated among the six countries involved -- the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany -- next week.
"There are elements that allow us to think we will have a resolution in the short term," the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.
He said he was "relatively optimistic" about having a resolution in the next few weeks.
Clamor for new sanctions -- led by the US, Britain and France -- mounted after Friday's collapse of an 18-month EU effort to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment.
Russia and China, the other two veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council, have been more reluctant regarding a third set of sanctions.
Russian and US officials declined comment after Saturday's talks. The chief US participant, US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, left France immediately afterward. The Russian official scheduled to attend, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak, was stuck in Canada because of snow and a colleague attended in his place.
The French diplomat insisted that there were no "deep differences" among the countries at Saturday's talks and said the new Chinese negotiator had been more cooperative than his predecessor.
He would not give details of the proposed third resolution, except to say it would be "along the same logic" as the first two.
Iran increased enrichment activities following the previous two sets of UN sanctions. The country maintains its nuclear program is exclusively aimed at generating electricity. Western powers fear it could be used to build weapons.
The French official insisted the goal was to bring the Iranians to the negotiating table -- not lead to a "global confrontation" with Iran.
He said, however, that "all the efforts to open negotiations are going nowhere."
The diplomat said Friday's meeting in London between EU envoy Javier Solana and Saeed Jalili, Iran's senior nuclear negotiator, was a "disaster."
That meeting had been considered a last chance for Iran to give in to UN pressure and freeze its enrichment program before a EU report on Iran's nuclear program that will be used in the discussion of new sanctions.
The Iranian negotiator said on Saturday that he would go to Moscow next week. In comments carried on Iran's state-run IRNA news agency, Jalili dismissed concerns about the collapse of the EU negotiation effort and about Solana's upcoming report on the issue.
"We expect the international community to adopt a positive stand on Iran's cooperation with" the International Atomic Energy Agency, Jalili said in Tehran.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday vowed that those behind bogus flood control projects would be arrested before Christmas, days after deadly back-to-back typhoons left swathes of the country underwater. Scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers — including Marcos’ cousin congressman — have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard or so-called “ghost” infrastructure projects. The Philippine Department of Finance has estimated the nation’s economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos (US$2 billion) since 2023 due to corruption in flood control projects. Criminal cases against most of the people implicated are nearly complete, Marcos told reporters. “We don’t file cases for
RSS