Miami Herald Logo

‘Huge lack of confidence’ as Iran nuclear talks open in Moscow | Miami Herald

×
  • E-edition
  • Home
    • Site Information
    • Contact Us
    • About Us
    • Herald Store
    • RSS Feeds
    • Special Sections
    • Advertise
    • Advertise with Us
    • Media Kit
    • Mobile
    • Mobile Apps & eReaders
    • Newsletters
    • Social
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Google+
    • Instagram
    • YouTube

    • Sections
    • News
    • South Florida
    • Miami-Dade
    • Broward
    • Florida Keys
    • Florida
    • Politics
    • Weird News
    • Weather
    • National & World
    • Colombia
    • National
    • World
    • Americas
    • Cuba
    • Guantánamo
    • Haiti
    • Venezuela
    • Local Issues
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Health Care
    • In Depth
    • Issues & Ideas
    • Traffic
    • Sections
    • Sports
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Pro & College
    • Miami Dolphins
    • Miami Heat
    • Miami Marlins
    • Florida Panthers
    • College Sports
    • University of Miami
    • Florida International
    • University of Florida
    • Florida State University
    • More Sports
    • High School Sports
    • Auto Racing
    • Fighting
    • Golf
    • Horse Racing
    • Outdoors
    • Soccer
    • Tennis
    • Youth Sports
    • Other Sports
    • Politics
    • Elections
    • The Florida Influencer Series
    • Sections
    • Business
    • Business Monday
    • Banking
    • International Business
    • National Business
    • Personal Finance
    • Real Estate News
    • Small Business
    • Technology
    • Tourism & Cruises
    • Workplace
    • Business Plan Challenge
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Cindy Krischer Goodman
    • The Starting Gate
    • Work/Life Balancing Act
    • Movers
    • Sections
    • Living
    • Advice
    • Fashion
    • Food & Drink
    • Health & Fitness
    • Home & Garden
    • Pets
    • Recipes
    • Travel
    • Wine
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Dave Barry
    • Ana Veciana-Suarez
    • Flashback Miami
    • More Living
    • LGBTQ South Florida
    • Palette Magazine
    • Indulge Magazine
    • South Florida Album
    • Broward Album
    • Sections
    • Entertainment
    • Books
    • Comics
    • Games & Puzzles
    • Horoscopes
    • Movies
    • Music & Nightlife
    • People
    • Performing Arts
    • Restaurants
    • TV
    • Visual Arts
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Jose Lambiet
    • Lesley Abravanel
    • More Entertainment
    • Events Calendar
    • Miami.com
    • Contests & Promotions
    • Sections
    • All Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Op-Ed
    • Editorial Cartoons
    • Jim Morin
    • Letters to the Editor
    • From Our Inbox
    • Speak Up
    • Submit a Letter
    • Meet the Editorial Board
    • Influencers Opinion
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Blog Directory
    • Columnist Directory
    • Andres Oppenheimer
    • Carl Hiaasen
    • Leonard Pitts Jr.
    • Fabiola Santiago
    • Obituaries
    • Obituaries in the News
    • Place an Obituary

    • Place an ad
    • All Classifieds
    • Announcements
    • Apartments
    • Auctions/Sales
    • Automotive
    • Commercial Real Estate
    • Employment
    • Garage Sales
    • Legals
    • Merchandise
    • Obituaries
    • Pets
    • Public Notices
    • Real Estate
    • Services
  • Public Notices
  • Cars
  • Jobs
  • Moonlighting
  • Real Estate
  • Mobile & Apps

  • el Nuevo Herald
  • Miami.com
  • Indulge

Latest News

‘Huge lack of confidence’ as Iran nuclear talks open in Moscow

By Scott Peterson

    ORDER REPRINT →

June 18, 2012 05:00 AM

Iran and world powers on Monday began to “engage” in detail about Iran’s nuclear program for the first time, although fundamental differences could prove unbridgeable at a second day of talks Tuesday, which could jeopardize the diplomatic track and eventually risk another Middle East war.

The P5+1 group (the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany) want Iran to give up its most sensitive uranium enrichment work, close a deeply buried facility and take steps that will forever keep it from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Iran’s response Monday to that proposal – first put forward during acrimonious talks in Baghdad last month – focused on recognition of its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes and lifting crippling economic sanctions.

Neither point is part of the current P5+1 package, which will be gnawed over in final sessions in Moscow Tuesday.

Sign Up and Save

Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

#ReadLocal

“The difficulty here is not only quite a distance between the positions but also the sequencing ... what comes first, what comes next, what this reciprocity means,” Sergei Ryabkov, a Russian deputy foreign minister and negotiator, told journalists after the first day of talks. “It’s very complex. The logic of the negotiations is extremely complicated.”

In what could prove to be a critical encounter, Iran’s chief negotiator Saeed Jalili met after the formal talks with his Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev, head of Russia’s national security council and the former chief of Russia’s FSB, the successor to the KGB. It was far from clear if Russian influence with Iran would be enough to yield progress when talks resume. An Iranian diplomat close to the talks told The Christian Science Monitor that the morning session was “not good at all,” although the afternoon was “better.”

“Neither side is ready to say what their real points are,” the diplomat said, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the talks. “They do not want to be in the position that the other side might guess their cards. Adding to that you could see huge lack of confidence.

P5+1 are not ready to give anything to Iran in response to Iran’s steps. (T)hey were here today just to have Iran’s response. It seemed that they did not have any clear vision (of) the next steps.”

Iran says it rejects nuclear weapons as un-Islamic; Israel says it could launch airstrikes to prevent Iran from having the capability to make an atomic bomb, and that negotiations with Iran are a waste of time.

So both the P5+1 and Iran have tried to spin the non-negative result of their “engagement” without deviating from their well-known positions.

“We had an intense and tough exchange of views,” said Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who represents the P5+1 at the talks.

“There was engagement,” said Mann. “We’ll have to wait and see tomorrow, I think, whether they come back with a positive attitude towards our proposals.”

The “clear” first step for the Iranians, he said, was to engage on their most sensitive 20 percent enriched uranium, which is only a few technical steps away from bomb grade.

Iranian officials have indicated since last fall that they were ready to deal on 20 percent enrichment. The Iranian diplomat said today that an integral part of Iran’s five-point counterproposal was that, in exchange for sanctions relief, Iran would “consider” a deal on 20 percent.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the point on his official website on Sunday, saying: “Today if they guarantee that they will provide 20 percent enriched fuel for the Iranian reactors, we won’t have any problem.” Ahmadinejad has little influence on nuclear policy, but the timing was significant.

Mr. Jalili’s deputy Ali Bagheri, for the first time in three rounds of negotiations this year, briefed journalists at the end of the first day of talks.

Apparently feeling the need to state Iran’s case, he said Iran responded to P5+1 concerns with “lengthy and detailed” discussions about how “clear, reciprocal steps” needed to be taken by each side, which could result in a “very serious achievement.”

Top priority for Iran, said Mr. Bagheri, is “the right to enrich (uranium) as a responsible member state of the NPT,” or Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Iranians, he said, also needed confidence building measures and “emphasized the mechanism which could be implemented in order to attain the confidence of the Iranian people.”

Jalili’s presentation “caught the attention of the other side,” said Bagheri, in “constructive and serious” talks.

Jalili told the P5+1 that the referral of Iran’s nuclear dossier to the United Nations Security Council was “illegal.” Since 2006, the council has imposed half a dozen resolutions that require a suspension of enrichment, while Iran resolves questions about past weapons-related work.

Even as the talks got under way in Moscow, Iran’s supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking in Tehran, warned world powers to “learn from the unsuccessful experience of confronting the Iranian nation and they should know that arrogance and irrelevant expectations ... won’t work.”

Ayatollah Khamenei’s web page used a headline that began: “Enemies need to learn lessons ...”

On the eve of the Moscow talks, a Western official said the P5+1 was ready to take “reciprocal steps in exchange for verifiable Iranian actions.”

The P5+1 proposal put forward in Baghdad has not changed, and includes likely deal-breakers for the Iranians such as suspension of all enrichment – which Iran for years has turned into a point of national pride – and shutting down a deeply buried enrichment facility that is closely monitored by UN nuclear inspectors.

“As we have said, Iran has a right to peaceful nuclear energy under the NPT, but it must first meet its international obligations,” the Western official said, indirectly referring to the UN resolutions that require suspending all levels of enrichment. “If Iran remains unwilling to take the opportunities these talks present, it will face continuing and intensified pressure and isolation.”

Iranian officials say they won’t cross their own red line and halt enrichment, as they once did from 2003 to 2005, only to see little return from their European interlocutors at the time.

The dispute over enrichment, which Iran began again in 2005 and has continued ever since, could derail the Moscow talks tomorrow. Western powers are concerned that Iran has stockpiled enough enriched uranium for four to five nuclear bombs, if enriched to higher levels.

“This is among the first or second most important thing for us,” says the Iranian diplomat. “Their (P5+1 priority) is any diversion of nuclear material for military purposes. Ours is recognition of our right to enrich.”

  Comments  

Videos

Baby born on a JetBlue flight

The Cuban government didn’t allow a cruise ship from the Port of Palm Beach to dock in Havana Friday (IN SPANISH)

View More Video

Trending Stories

Here are some of the worst mistakes immigrants make applying for legal papers

February 15, 2019 11:26 AM

Military planes carrying 180 tons of aid for Venezuelans fly from Miami to Colombia

February 16, 2019 08:00 AM

Dolphins sign former second-round defensive end and a young cornerback

February 15, 2019 03:30 PM

U.S. looks to send food aid to Haiti as violence brews humanitarian crisis

February 15, 2019 06:27 PM

‘Crazy chick’ didn’t want to sit next to a toddler on a plane. Then came the outburst.

February 15, 2019 03:28 PM

Read Next

Police: Aurora attacker used gun he shouldn’t have owned

Latest News

Police: Aurora attacker used gun he shouldn’t have owned

By DON BABWIN and CARYN ROUSSEAU Associated Press

    ORDER REPRINT →

February 16, 2019 06:42 PM

The man who killed five co-workers at a suburban Chicago manufacturing plant took a gun he wasn't allowed to have to a job he must have known he was about to lose.

KEEP READING

Sign Up and Save

#ReadLocal

Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

MORE LATEST NEWS

The Latest: CEO: Gunman passed background check when hired

Latest News

The Latest: CEO: Gunman passed background check when hired

February 16, 2019 06:05 PM
Military planes carrying 180 tons of aid for Venezuelans fly from Miami to Colombia

Venezuela

Military planes carrying 180 tons of aid for Venezuelans fly from Miami to Colombia

February 16, 2019 08:00 AM
‘Youngest customer to date.’ Baby boy born aboard a JetBlue flight to Fort Lauderdale

Broward County

‘Youngest customer to date.’ Baby boy born aboard a JetBlue flight to Fort Lauderdale

February 16, 2019 04:08 PM
Dolphins hire ex-Raiders GM Reggie McKenzie, the league’s 2016 executive of year

Miami Dolphins

Dolphins hire ex-Raiders GM Reggie McKenzie, the league’s 2016 executive of year

February 16, 2019 04:27 PM
Dwyane Wade isn’t the only one representing the Heat during All-Star Weekend

Miami Heat

Dwyane Wade isn’t the only one representing the Heat during All-Star Weekend

February 16, 2019 04:09 PM
Panic at the Orlando airport when a man alarms passengers at security checkpoint

Florida

Panic at the Orlando airport when a man alarms passengers at security checkpoint

February 16, 2019 02:52 PM
Take Us With You

Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand.

Icon for mobile apps

Miami Herald App

View Newsletters

Subscriptions
  • Start a Subscription
  • Customer Service
  • eEdition
  • Vacation Hold
  • Pay Your Bill
  • Rewards
Learn More
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletters
  • News in Education
  • Public Insight Network
  • Reader Panel
Advertising
  • Place a Classified
  • Media Kit
  • Commercial Printing
  • Public Notices
Copyright
Commenting Policy
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service


Back to Story