Reuters: Iran and the European Union will hold talks about Tehran’s disputed atomic ambitions in London on November 30, official Iranian media said on Wednesday. TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran and the European Union will hold talks about Tehran’s disputed atomic ambitions in London on November 30, official Iranian media said on Wednesday.
The outcome of such a meeting between Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, if confirmed, could help determine whether Iran will face new sanctions over its nuclear defiance.
The United States accuses Iran of seeking to build atomic bombs and says that if it succeeds it could threaten world peace. Iran says its program is peaceful and has consistently refused to heed U.N. demands to halt its sensitive nuclear work.
Solana is due to report on Iran’s readiness or otherwise to suspend uranium enrichment and enter into negotiations on its nuclear program before major powers take a decision on whether to impose further punitive measures on the Islamic Republic.
The United Nations Security Council has passed two mild sanctions resolutions against Tehran since December. The United States is now pushing for broader U.N. measures but Russia and China have so far been reluctant.
Javad Vaeedi, Jalili’s deputy, said he had agreed the meeting in a telephone conversation with a Solana aide.
“Dr Jalili and Solana will meet on November 30 in London,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Vaeedi as saying.
There was no immediate comment from EU officials. Solana’s spokeswoman earlier denied another Iranian report, citing an unnamed source, that they were scheduled to meet on November 26.
NO RETREAT
In what analysts said signaled a hardening of Iran’s position on the nuclear issue, Jalili replaced Ali Larijani as chief nuclear negotiator in October.
Washington says it is committed to finding a diplomatic solution to the nuclear row, but has not ruled out military action if that fails.
Iran says it wants only to generate electricity so that the world’s fourth-largest crude producer can export more oil.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday told a provincial rally his country would “not retreat even one iota”.
The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said last week that Iran had made important strides towards clarifying past nuclear work, as part of an August deal between the two sides.
But it also said key questions remained unresolved and that Iran had significantly expanded uranium enrichment. Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for power plants but also, if refined much further, provide material for bombs.
(Reporting by Zahra Hosseinian; writing by Fredrik Dahl; editing by Andrew Roche)
