Iran, world powers agree to new round of talks
Iran and world powers agreed Thursday to hold a new round of nuclear talks, a diplomat involved in discussions in Baghdad said, with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to give details shortly.
“There will be more talks,” the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity following two days of tough discussions between Iran and the P5+1 - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany.
The diplomat added, however, that it was “not yet” possible to give the venue and date of the next round.
Ashton was expected to expand on that in a news conference to be held after a brief plenary session of the representatives of Iran and the six powers.
Officials on both sides said their respective positions remained far apart, although at least they were now holding a substantive dialogue that clearly pointed to the areas of disagreement to be bridged.
Tough talks aimed at helping resolve the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program entered an unscheduled second day earlier on Thursday with world powers and Tehran seemingly wildly at odds, as a U.N. watchdog report is expected to show that Iran has installed more uranium enrichment centrifuges at an underground site.
“They are positive but this is not our position. We need to find a common base in order to continue the negotiations,” an official with the Iranian delegation at the talks in Baghdad told AFP early on Thursday.
He added that the meeting could wrap up quickly, with the Chinese and Russian delegations keen to leave around that time.
On Wednesday the P5+1 powers -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany -- put a new package of proposals on the table that appeared to horrify the Iranians.
The official with the Iranian delegation, who wished to remain anonymous, called for the P5+1 to “revise” the offer, even saying that common ground was “not yet sufficient for another round” of talks after Baghdad.
Reflecting official thinking, Iranian state media, including the Islamic Republic News Agency, all called the proposals “outdated, not comprehensive and unbalanced.”
“There have been some areas of common ground and there has been a fair amount of disagreement,” said a senior U.S. official involved in the talks. “But we all knew that we were going to have a lot of gaps and areas of disagreement.”
“We have engaged in a lot of back and forth. Some of that has been difficult but any negotiation that is worth its salt is difficult because you are getting down the issues that matter. We are the beginning of this process. We are not in the middle of it and we are certainly not at the end of it.”
World powers to offer Iran some sweeteners
The new approach, presented on behalf of the P5+1 by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, was thought to include the demand that Iran suspend uranium enrichment to 20 percent.
In return world powers were prepared to offer various sweeteners but not Iran's key demand of relaxing some of the U.N. Security Council and unilateral sanctions piled on the Islamic republic in recent years.
Instead they reportedly proposed a pledge not to impose any new sanctions, as well easing Iranian access to aircraft parts and a possible suspension of an EU insurance ban on ships carrying Iranian oil.
It also reportedly included a revival of previous attempts to get Iran to ship abroad its stockpiles of enriched uranium in return for fuel for a reactor producing medical isotopes.
But Iran announced on Tuesday that it was loading domestically produced, 20-percent enriched uranium fuel into the reactor, and the Iranian official in Baghdad was dismissive of reviving the idea of a swap.
“A possible swap of uranium enriched by Iran for fuel isn’t very interesting for us because we are already producing our own fuel,” the Iranian official said.
Iran made a five-step counter-proposal that an official said was “based on the principles of step-by-step and reciprocity,” which the ISNA news agency called “comprehensive... transparent and practical.”
Iran and the major powers returned to talks in Istanbul in mid-April after a 15-month hiatus, finding enough common ground to agree to meet again in Baghdad, hailing what they said was a fresh attitude.
But the Baghdad talks were always going to be tough, as to make progress the two sides would have to tackle some of the thorny issues that have divided them -- and the P5+1 themselves -- for years.
Diplomats and analysts said that a satisfactory outcome would be an agreement to hold more regular talks at working level to thrash out a series of confidence-building measures in what would be a lengthy process.
One key way for Iran to win the confidence of the P5+1 would be to implement the additional protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows for more intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The IAEA also wants Iran to address allegations made in its November report that until 2003, and possibly since, Tehran had a “structured program” of “activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.”
IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said on Tuesday after talks in Tehran that a deal on ways to go over these accusations with the Iranians would be signed “quite soon.” Western reaction though was cool.
Iran installs more uranium enrichment centrifuges
Meanwhile, a U.N. watchdog report is expected to show that Iran has installed more uranium enrichment centrifuges at an underground site, Western diplomatic sources say.
Two sources said the Islamic state may have placed in position nearly 350 machines since February -- in addition to the almost 700 centrifuges already operating at the Fordow facility -- but that they were not yet being used to refine uranium.
If confirmed in the next quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear program by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, tentatively expected on Friday, it is likely to be seen as a sign of continued defiance by the Islamic state of international demands to suspend such activity, according to Reuters.
Getting Tehran to halt its enrichment of uranium to a fissile concentration of 20 percent -- which it started in 2010 and has since sharply expanded -- was a key priority for world powers in their talks with Iran in Baghdad on Wednesday.
Fordow, estimated to be buried beneath 80 meters (265 feet) of rock and soil, gives Iran better protection against any Israeli or U.S. military strikes and the shift of nuclear work to the site is of particular concern for the West.
The last IAEA report, published in February, said Iran had trebled output of 20 percent uranium since late 2011 after starting up production at Fordow near the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Qom and later increasing it.
The new report is not expected to show Iran increasing production. But the installation of possibly hundreds more centrifuges could set the stage for that ahead. Such machines spin at supersonic speed to raise the concentration of the fissile isotope of uranium.
Typically 174 centrifuges are needed for one production unit, but Iran has for its 20 percent enrichment work been using sets of two interconnected cascades, with each set containing 348 such machines, to increase efficiency.
It is operating two of those units at Fordow, as well as one at an above-ground site at Natanz in central Iran, and one more may now be nearing completion at Fordow, the sources said.
Iran has earlier suggested it would close down the production of 20 percent at Natanz -- where the work started in 2010 -- once Fordow was up and running. But it has yet to do so, Western diplomats say.
Nuclear bombs require uranium enriched to 90 percent, but much of the effort required to get there is already achieved once it reaches 20 percent concentration, shortening the time needed for any nuclear weapons “break-out.”
Iran has steadily increased uranium enrichment since 2007 and now has enough of the 3.5 and 20 percent material for some four bombs if refined further, experts say.
The lower-grade uranium is the usual level required for nuclear power plants. Iran says it is producing 20 percent uranium to make fuel for a medical research reactor.