Europe Not Insisting Iran Abandon Uranium Enrichment

AFP, Yahoo! News:

The EU is not insisting in crucial talks that Iran abandon uranium enrichment, a senior Iranian negotiator said, despite Washington's demand Tehran give up producing nuclear fuel which can be used to make atom bombs.

"It is quite clear that for the Europeans the abandoning or cessation (of uranium enrichment) is not even on the negotiating table," said Sirus Nasseri, who led the Iranian team that just concluded four days of talks in Geneva with EU negotiators Britain, France and Germany.

Speaking to AFP by telephone before leaving Vienna for Tehran, Nasseri said: "What we are negotiating (with the European trio) is to seek ways that the Europeans can have additional assurances on our fuel production." ... read more

Nasseri said Iran and the EU "are trying to have a compromise agreement" on the enrichment issue.

"It is a possibility to discuss the extent and level of (nuclear) capacity we would pursue. The basis could be on the ground of the level of enrichment and the extent of enrichment," he said without elaborating.

The foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany had said in a report released in Brussels Friday that they were trying to get "objective guarantees that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes."

The report by Jack Straw, Michel Barnier and Joschka Fischer said Iran must maintain "while long-term arrangements are being negotiated" a suspension of enrichment it had agreed in November in order to begin talks -- which opened the following month.

Nasseri said however that the Europeans knew that insisting on Iran's abandoning uranium enrichment was "a process killer."

A senior European diplomat told AFP that the European trio had informed the Iranians that if they insist on enriching uranium they should "put in place objective guarantees as good as their abandoning the fuel cycle and they haven't come back (to the Europeans) on that."

Nasseri ruled out any possibility of Iran agreeing to a moratorium on enrichment, as the head of the UN nuclear watchdog the IAEA Mohamed ElBaradei has suggested.

"A moratorium is impossible and uncalled for. There is no reason to go for such a thing. No other country would," Nasseri said.

And he dismissed the US trade offers as unrelated to Iran's nuclear program.

"It is similar to us sending a shipment of pistachios to the United States and asking them to abandon nuclear fuel production. It's as absurd as that," Nasseri said.

The EU-Iran discussions could continue next week in Geneva, with a session to review overall progress to be held towards the end of the month possibly in Paris, diplomats said.