Iran was upbeat on Wednesday
after talks with world powers about its nuclear work ended with
an agreement to meet again, but Western officials said it had
yet to take concrete steps to ease their fears about its atomic
ambitions.
Rapid progress was unlikely with Iran's presidential
election, due in June, raising domestic political tensions,
diplomats and analysts had said ahead of the Feb. 26-27 meeting
in the Kazakh city of Almaty, the first in eight months.
The United States, China, France, Russia, Britain and Germany
offered modest sanctions relief in return for Iran curbing its most
sensitive nuclear work but made clear that they expected no immediate
breakthrough.
In an attempt to make their proposals more palatable to
Iran, the six powers appeared to have softened previous demands
somewhat, for example regarding their requirement that the
Islamic state ship out its stockpile of higher-grade uranium.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said the powers
had tried to "get closer to our viewpoint", which he said was
positive.
In Paris, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry commented that
the talks had been "useful" and that a serious engagement by
Iran could lead to a comprehensive deal in a decade-old dispute
that has threatened to trigger a new Middle East war.
Iran's foreign minister said in Vienna he was "very
confident" an agreement could be reached and Jalili, the chief
negotiator, said he believed the Almaty meeting could be a
"turning point".
However, one diplomat said Iranian officials at the
negotiations appeared to be suggesting that they were opening
new avenues, but it was not clear if this was really the case.
Iran expert Dina Esfandiary of the International Institute
for Strategic Studies said: "Everyone is saying Iran was more
positive and portrayed the talks as a win."
"I reckon the reason for that is that they are saving face
internally while buying time with the West until after the
elections," she said.
The two sides agreed to hold expert-level talks in Istanbul
on March 18 to discuss the powers' propsals, and return to
Almaty for political discussions on April 5-6, when Western
diplomats made clear they wanted to see a substantive response
from Iran.
"Iran knows what it needs to do, the president has made
clear his determination to implement his policy that Iran will
not have a nuclear weapon," Kerry said.
A senior U.S. official in Almaty said, "What we care about
at the end is concrete results."
ISRAELI WARNING
Israel, assumed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed
power, was watching the talks closely. It has strongly hinted it
might attack Iran if diplomacy and sanctions fail to ensure that
it cannot build a nuclear weapon. Iran denies any such aim.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said economic
sanctions were failing and urged the international community to
threaten Iran with military action.
Western officials said the offer presented by the six powers
included an easing of a ban on trade in gold and other precious
metals, and a relaxation of an import embargo on Iranian
petrochemical products. They gave no further details.
In exchange, a senior U.S official said, Iran would among
other things have to suspend uranium enrichment to a fissile
concentration of 20 percent at its Fordow underground facility
and "constrain the ability to quickly resume operations there".
The official did not describe what was being asked of Iran
as a "shutdown" of the plant as Western diplomats had said in
previous meetings with Iran last year.
Iran says it has a sovereign right to enrich uranium for
peaceful purposes, and wants to fuel nuclear power plants so
that it can export more oil.
But 20-percent purity is far higher than that needed for
nuclear power, and rings alarm bells abroad because it is only a
short technical step away from weapons-grade uranium. Iran says
it produces higher-grade uranium to fuel a research reactor.
Iran's growing stockpile of 20-percent-enriched uranium is
already more than half-way to a "red line" that Israel has made
clear it would consider sufficient for a bomb.
In Vienna on Wednesday, a senior U.N. nuclear agency
official told diplomats in a closed-door briefing that Iran was
technically ready to sharply increase this higher-grade
enrichment, two Western diplomats said.
"Iran can triple 20 percent production in the blink of an
eye," one of the diplomats said.
The U.S. official in Almaty said the powers' latest proposal
would "significantly restrict the accumulation of
near-20-percent enriched uranium in Iran, while enabling the
Iranians to produce sufficient fuel" for their Tehran medical
reactor.
This appeared to be a softening of a previous demand that
Iran ship out its stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium,
which it says it needs to produce medical isotopes.
Iran has often indicated that 20-percent enrichment could be
up for negotiation if it received the fuel from abroad instead.
Jalili suggested Iran could discuss the issue, although he
appeared to rule out shutting down Fordow. He said the powers
had not made that specific demand.
The
Iranian rial, which has lost more than half its foreign exchange value
in the last year as sanctions bite, rose some 2 percent on Wednesday,
currency tracking websites reported.
(www.reuters.com)