Reuters: Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Wednesday his country would start preliminary talks within a fortnight with EU countries over its nuclear programme. ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Wednesday his country would start preliminary talks within a fortnight with EU countries over its nuclear programme.
“The preliminary negotiations will start within two weeks,” he told a news conference. “The officials will negotiate the agenda and afterwards negotiations will start on ministerial level.”
He said it was not yet clear where the talks would be held.
Earlier, Germany’s new Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Berlin, France and Britain would resume nuclear talks with Iran only if Tehran signalled it truly wanted to dispel international fears about its atomic programme.
“A few days ago the EU3 accepted the request of Iran to resume negotiations. But the starting pistol for the resumption of talks has not been shot yet,” Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the German parliament after a visit to the United States.
He said the resumption of talks was “conditional on Iran sending signals that it will … accept a solution that allows it to get peaceful nuclear energy but rules out the possibility that Iran will have a closed fuel cycle.”
For the so-called EU3, preventing Iran from getting a “closed fuel cycle” means that it can never be permitted to enrich uranium, a technology that would enable Tehran to make fuel for power plants or atomic weapons.
