Guarded Tone in Geneva as Negotiators Seek Iran Accord

By an IPS Correspondent Reprint | | Print |

GENEVA, Nov 21 2013 (IPS) - Amidst rising expectations of a breakthrough, Iran and six world powers Wednesday resumed their quest for a deal on Iran’s controversial nuclear programme that seemed just within reach earlier this month.

Mohammed Javad Zarif, Iranian Minister for Foreign Affairs (centre), gets out of a car at the Geneva talks. Credit: Courtesy of the European Commission

In the first of at least three days of talks here, diplomats from Iran and the so-called P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) held a series of plenary and bilateral sessions which failed to clarify whether the issues that prevented an accord less than two weeks ago had been resolved.

While sources close to the Iranian delegation suggested that disagreements among the P5+1, notably between France and the other major powers, persisted, a senior U.S. official told reporters that the group was united. “There is quite a lot of misinformation out there,” according to the official.

“A lot of progress was made, but differences remain,” said EU Spokesperson Michael Mann late Wednesday, repeating the formulation offered by EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif Nov. 9 when the last round of talks broke up.

While participants involved in the talks have been mostly tight-lipped on the details of their discussions, the deal on the table – an interim agreement pending a comprehensive accord to be completed within six months to a year — involves reciprocal moves by both sides.

Among other steps, Iran would reportedly be required to freeze its production of 20-percent enriched uranium and put its existing stockpile under strict monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) pending its conversion into oxide; limit all of its enrichment to not more than 3.5 percent; and delay fueling its yet-to-be-completed Arak heavy-water facility, which is designed to produce plutonium for its nuclear industry.

In return, Iran would receive what U.S. officials have called “limited but reversible” relief from sanctions on its trade in petrochemicals and precious metals, and access to as much as 10 billion dollars of its foreign exchange reserves that are currently frozen in Western bank accounts.

“The proposed deal is in America’s national interest and would improve security for the U.S. and its regional allies,” Jim Walsh, an international security expert at MIT, told IPS. “The primary concern of nonproliferation experts is the threat posed by 20-percent enrichment, and this deal ends that,” said Walsh.

The tone expressed by a senior administration official at the conclusion of Wednesday’s negotiating session was more subdued than that expressed by U.S. diplomats during the last round of talks two weeks ago. “The atmosphere [of the talks] was positive,” said the official who briefed reporters. “If this were easy to do, it would have been done a long time ago.”

The point of this session is “getting back to work…shutting out the noise, getting into the nitty-gritty of a first-step agreement and the parameters of a comprehensive agreement and seeing if we can narrow the gaps to conclude such an agreement,” the official said. Earlier in the day, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told the Iranian press corps here: “If we reach good results today, we will discuss the draft tomorrow.”

A meeting of political directors from the P5+1, that included an experts’ discussion Wednesday morning, was followed by a 90-minute bilateral discussion between Ashton and Zarif.

In the evening, a brief plenary session was reportedly followed by separate bilateral meetings between Iran and Russia, China, and the three European countries. The Iranian and U.S. delegations will hold yet another bilateral meeting Thursday, in addition to the plenary sessions.

In a televised speech to members of Iran’s paramilitary Basij force earlier Wednesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated his support for Tehran’s negotiating team and pledged not to intervene in the talks so long as it does not violate “certain red lines and limits” – an apparent reference to Iran’s insistence that it has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

“We want to have relations with all people,” Khamenei said. “Even with the American people we do not have enmities, we have a problem with the U.S. government and its arrogance,” he said in an otherwise militant speech in which he strongly denounced Israel as “the rabid dog of the region” and France for allegedly doing Israel’s bidding in the P5+1.