Tehran snubbed the West in talks on Iran’s contentious nuclear program, Iranian media reports said yesterday, blaming Western mistakes for the failure of the dialogue.
However, most newspapers stuck to straight news reports on the two-day meeting in Istanbul that ended on Saturday, with a few offering editorial comments that took shots at the West.
“The West was passive to Iran’s proposals,” a front-page headline said in the state-run Iran newspaper, while the moderate Tehran Emrouz said: “Iran snubs America.”
The Farsi-language hard-line newspaper Kayhan echoed the Iran’s view with a page-one banner that read: “Fruitless talks as Iran refuses to be blackmailed.”
In an editorial, Kayhan directly blamed the West for the failure of the dialogue, saying: “Iran negotiated strongly in Istanbul, but heavy mistakes in calculations in the West’s mind did not allow an agreement to be reached.”
Kayhan’s English version said Iran entered the dialogue on an “equal footing” with the West, adding that “lifting of sanctions was the price the West has to pay” for Tehran’s help in solving issues of the region.
“The West needs Iran and that explains why they are desperate to sit for talks with the Islamic republic more often. But ... the West has to pay a price for Iran’s cooperation and assistance” in Iraq and Afghanistan, it said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that Tehran was open to holding further talks.
“They have talked for a few rounds, but we never expected that issues would be resolved during these few sessions because of the record and mentality of the other parties,” he said in a speech aired live on state TV from the northern city of Rasht. “But if the other side is determined and committed to justice, law and respect, one can hope that suitable results could be achieved in future sessions.”
He also said the talks in Istanbul created the conditions for “good agreements in future sessions” as both sides met and got acquainted to each other’s views.
However, he also said that “the uncultured Zionists [Israel] and some power-hungry people in Europe and the US are not interested in a good resolution of the issues.”
A senior Chinese diplomat also said yesterday the Iranian nuclear issue could not be resolved in just one or two discussions.
“The Iranian nuclear issue is complicated and sensitive and obviously cannot be comprehensively resolved through one or two rounds of dialogue,” Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Wu Hailong (吳海龍) said, according to a brief statement posted on the ministry’s Web site.
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