AFP: A senior Iranian official said Sunday that Tehran has only conditionally agreed to EU demands it maintain a suspension of sensitive nuclear activities until the end of July, the official news agency IRNA reported. “Iran has conditionally agreed to the EU offer, and Europe has until the end of July to provide a complete proposal with details,” Supreme National Security Council offical Ali Agha Mohammadi was quoted as saying.
AFP
TEHRAN – A senior Iranian official said Sunday that Tehran has only conditionally agreed to EU demands it maintain a suspension of sensitive nuclear activities until the end of July, the official news agency IRNA reported.
“Iran has conditionally agreed to the EU offer, and Europe has until the end of July to provide a complete proposal with details,” Supreme National Security Council offical Ali Agha Mohammadi was quoted as saying.
He said the conditions were that three joint working groups and a steering committee meet before the end of July and “that there is an exchange between the European foreign ministers and the secretary of Supreme National Security Council (Hassan Rowhani)”.
These demands, he said, were aimed at ensuring that any European proposal is in line with the “agreed aims” of a nuclear suspension agreement signed in Paris between Iran and Britain, France and Germany last November.
“The two sides must have offers in line with the main aims of the Paris agreement, which is objective guarantees on our part and firm guarantees from the European side,” Mohammadi said.
Iran has temporarily suspended activities linked to uranium enrichment, which makes what can be fuel for civilian power reactors or the raw material of atom bombs, but insists it has the right to carry out enrichment within the framework of a peaceful nuclear programme.
Disagreement over enrichment, which the European trio wants Iran to definitively abandon in return for trade, technology and security incentives almost scuttled the EU-Iran talks that began in December.
But Iran and the European trio agreed at a ministerial-level meeting in Geneva last month to resume talks in August, after Iran’s presidential election June 17 and after the EU comes up in July with concrete proposals on cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme.
Iran’s latest demand is for that timetable to be brought forward — something that may prove a headache for Eurocrats planning their summer holidays.
Tehran has continued to complain the Europeans have been seeking to drag out the talks, and therefore Iran’s nuclear suspension.
