AFP: The European Union and Iran are to hold new nuclear talks on January 18, diplomats said Friday, confirming the actual date for a meeting announced on Wednesday. VIENNA, Dec 23 (AFP) – The European Union and Iran are to hold new nuclear talks on January 18, diplomats said Friday, confirming the actual date for a meeting announced on Wednesday.
“The meeting will be on January 18 in Vienna,” said a Middle Eastern diplomat close to the talks, in which the West is asking Iran to cease nuclear fuel work in order to guarantee that it will not make atomic weapons.
The EU and Iran Wednesday re-started talks that had broken off last August when Tehran began uranium conversion, the first step in making enriched uranium that can be nuclear reactor fuel or atom bomb material.
Another diplomat, who like the first asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the issue, said that the European Union and its backer, the United States, had wanted the meeting to be held in the second half of January.
The West is “operating on the assumption that by late January, it will be clear that the current efforts at diplomacy are totally exhausted.”
The European Union has threatened to take Iran before the UN Security Council for possible sanctions if Tehran does not cooperate fully with a UN nuclear agency investigation into its atomic program and, as well, abandon work on making nuclear fuel.
