EU powers said yesterday they had agreed to last-minute talks
with Iran today before a UN nuclear watchdog meeting that could
spawn UN Security Council steps against Teheran over concerns it
seeks atom bombs.
But "EU3" diplomats held out scant hope of a breakthrough in
their first direct contact with Iran since December, noting Teheran
was defiantly accelerating uranium enrichment work and declining to
embrace a Russian proposal to defuse the crisis.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, fresh from
inconclusive talks in Moscow on an offer to enrich uranium for Iran
in Russia to pre-empt diversions into bombmaking, announced he
would see British, French and German envoys before March 6.
That is the date when the International Atomic Energy Agency's
board of governors will meet to weigh a report by the IAEA chief
saying essentially that Iran had ignored a February 4 board call to
re-suspend enrichment work to regain world trust.
Britain and Germany confirmed a meeting of foreign ministers
with Larijani was set for today in Vienna at his request. "We will
listen to what Iran has to say but we have no new proposals," said
a British Foreign Office spokesman.
EU3 diplomats said Larijani would be again told Iran must return
to complete suspension of enrichment-related work.
An EU3 diplomat, who like others asked not to be identified due
to the subject's delicacy, said his side was "not optimistic there
will be any outcome, not least because there has clearly been no
breakthrough with Russia."
"We agreed to this meeting only reluctantly. But we decided to
show the EU3 format is still on the table since Iran had pronounced
it dead," said another EU3 diplomat in Vienna.
(China Daily March 3, 2006)
