The US and five other world powers began high-stakes talks yesterday with Iran to demand a freeze of its nuclear activities, with a senior US official saying Washington was open to rare one-on-one talks with Iranian diplomats.
The EU’s Javier Solana, who is formally heading the one-day negotiations with chief Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili, was upbeat before the start of the talks in an 18th century villa in Geneva.
The US official briefed reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the private nature of the talks.
A bilateral meeting with Iran would reflect Washington’s determination to get results from the meeting.
The fact that the meeting is taking place at all offers some hope, reflecting both sides’ desire to talk, despite a spike in tensions over last week’s revelations by Iran that it had been secretly building a new uranium enrichment plant.
But with the US and its allies contemplating new and tighter sanctions on Tehran, there are fears the negotiations may again end in failure.
In addition to the US and Iran, the countries meeting yesterday included members of the UN Security Council and Germany.
The US delegation is headed by William Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs.
The US State Department stressed its hope that the session would open the door to more in-depth dialogue about ways Iran could alleviate concerns that its emerging nuclear program may be secretly developing nuclear weapons.
If Iran is willing to address the nuclear issues, then there likely will be subsequent meetings, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington.
“That process will take some time,” Crowley said. “We’re not going to make a snap judgment on Thursday. We’re going to see how that meeting goes, evaluate the willingness of Iran to engage on these issues.”
Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin asked what Moscow hoped from the talks, said: “To have a start that has a continuation.”
Chinese diplomats have also been urging Iran to negotiate with the six powers, UN diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Crowley noted that US President Barack Obama has said he intends to take a few months to assess Iran’s position and consult with negotiating partners before deciding what next steps to take.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS