Global Powers Agree to Resume Nuclear Talks With Iran

The global powers dealing with Iran’s  disputed nuclear program said Tuesday  that they had accepted its offer to resume negotiations broken off in stalemate more than a year ago — a  move that could help relieve increased pressure from Israel to use military  force against Tehran.
“I have offered to resume talks with Iran on the nuclear issue,” said Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief,  who represents the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany as the contact on the nuclear issue with Iran. “We hope  that Iran will now enter into a sustained  process of constructive dialogue which  will deliver real progress.”

The announcement of a new round of  face-to-face negotiations — which E.U.  officials said would probably take the  form of a series of meetings with no fixed deadline — came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel,  which regards Iran as its most dangerous enemy, was in the midst of a two- day visit to the United States to press  his view that diplomatic and economic  pressures on Iran to dissuade it from developing a nuclear weapon were not working. Mr. Obama, who has said a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable, urged  Mr. Netanyahu to give diplomacy and  sanctions more time.

At a news conference in Washington after the announcement, Mr. Obama largely repeated his recent comments  on Iran. But he coupled them with an unusually blunt warning to his Republican  rivals against irresponsible “bluster”  or any reckless rush to war.

“Those folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities,” he said, referring to the Republicans. “They’re not commander  in chief.”

“This is not a game and there’s nothing casual about it,” the president said.

Defending his own record on Iran, which he said had deeply isolated the Iranian authorities and helped to pressure them to resume negotiations, he said: “The one thing we have not done, is we haven’t launched a war. If some of these people think we should launch a war they should say so.”

Hanging over the resumption of talks  is deep concern about a rerun of previous discussions in Istanbul that broke off in January 2011 when the Iranians resisted discussing the nuclear issue.  Failed talks like those in Istanbul could  increase the risk of military action, said  Trita Parsi, president of the National  Iranian American Council, a Washington-based advocacy group.

“If you have talks going it will make it  much harder for the Netanyahu government to take military action,” Mr. Parsi  said. “It is critical that the talks end up  becoming a real negotiation, a real process, and not just another exchange of  ultimatums. If the two sides fail to establish a process rather than just another  meeting, the risk of war will rise significantly.”

Fears of an attack on Iran have driven up oil prices and represent a threat to  the already fragile state of a global economy still reeling from a sovereign debt crisis in Europe. At the same time, the Iranians have acutely felt the squeeze from a round of  sanctions aimed at getting Iran to freeze  its uranium enrichment program, which  Western leaders suspect is designed to  give Tehran a nuclear weapons capability. Iran says the program is for peaceful  purposes.

“Our approach to sanctions has been  proven to be the right one — not targeted against population but meant to  change the Iranian approach to the nuclear file,” a senior E.U. official who  spoke on condition of anonymity told reporters in Brussels.

“We don’t want to have talks for  talks,” the E.U. official said. “We want  concrete results. They are very, very  important talks and we do not want  them to fail.”

Preparations for the resumption of  talks had been going on for several  weeks, and the decision to go ahead was  a result of a show of good faith by Iran.  “We hope that this time Iran is ready,”  said the E.U. official, who emphasized  the importance of “a clear written commitment by Iran to be willing to address  the nuclear issue in talks.”

The official would not comment on  whether the E.U. was prepared to ease  sanc
In a letter sent Monday to Saeed Jalili,  Iran’s chief negotiator, Ms. Ashton said  “dialogue will have to focus on this key  issue” of the nuclear program. Now that  Mr. Jalili has made that pledge, the talks  can resume “as soon as possible,” Ms.  Ashton wrote.

But that will first require a period of  preliminary discussions between E.U.  and Iranian diplomats, possibility including a top aide to Mr. Jalili, that are  expected to take place over the next two  weeks to decide important details like a  site for the talks, according the E.U. official.

No formal negotiations would take  place until after New Year holiday in  Iran later this month, the official said.  Senior French officials said talks could  formally get under way in early April,  but they also noted the pressure to show  rapid progress, saying a military strike  by Israel could otherwise be the result.

The E.U. official said pressure had  been brought to bear on Tehran by the  “unity” shown by the United States,  Russia, China and the Europeans.

The British foreign secretary, William  Hague, issued a statement reflecting  that vision. “We all agree that the international community should demonstrate its commitment to a diplomatic  solution by acknowledging Iran’s agreement to meet, by testing its desire to  talk and by offering it the opportunity to  respond to our legitimate concerns  about its nuclear intentions,” Mr. Hague  said.

In France, Bernard Valero, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, warned  against a repeat of “the experience of  the fruitless discussions in Istanbul”  and underlined that Iran faced a  “united” front from global powers.

Guido Westerwelle, Germany’s foreign minister, warned Iranian officials  against stalling. Iran only damages its  own interests through “tactical maneuvering and playing for time,” Mr. Westerwelle said.

The prospect of new talks emerged  against a background of mounting tensions, with Iran facing a European oil  embargo in July and other sanctions  that have deepened its economic gloom.  At the same time, Israel signaled increasing readiness to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities to set back the enrichment program, while the United States  wants more time for economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure to press  Tehran toward a settlement.

There were conflicting reports on  Tuesday about Iran’s readiness to permit inspectors from the International  Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear supervisory body, to visit  a secret military complex to which they  have been denied access. An Iranian  news agency, ISNA, said that Iran had  reversed its refusal to permit I.A.E.A.  inspectors to visit the complex at  Parchin, southeast of Tehran.

But a news release from Iran’s representatives at the I.A.E.A. headquarters  in Vienna suggested that the offer was  conditional, preliminary and limited to  only two of the five areas that the  agency’s experts wished to investigate.  It also accused the agency of ignoring  an agreement to postpone its request to  visit the secret site at Parchin until after  a meeting this week of the agency’s  board of governors.

The ISNA report was apparently  based on the same news release , which  the Iranian mission at the I.A.E.A. said  it had issued on Monday.

The I.A.E.A. believes that secret military work may have been carried out at  Parchin and has been pressing for access. Last month, a senior delegation  from the atomic agency held its second  round of talks in a month with Iranian  officials in Tehran.

“During both the first and second  round of discussions, the agency team  requested access to the military site at  Parchin. Iran did not grant permission  for this visit to take place,” the I.A.E.A.  said at the time.

“Intensive efforts were made to reach  agreement on a document facilitating  the clarification of unresolved issues in  connection with Iran’s nuclear program, particularly those relating to possible military dimensions. Unfortunately, agreement was not reached on  this document,” its statement said.

But in the news release on Monday offering their own version of the talks in  February, the Iranian mission at the  I.A.E.A. said Tehran had repeated its  readiness to “take practical steps including granting access on two issues”  — detonator development and high explosive initiation — but the I.A.E.A.  team “did not accept the offer” and returned to Vienna on the instructions of  the agency’s director general Yukiya  Amano.

Access to the Parchin site may test  whether Iran will ever allow the kind of  intrusive inspections that most Western  officials say are necessary to establish  whether Iran has conducted research  on nuclear weapons. The last report by  the I.A.E.A. in November said Iran had  gone beyond theoretical studies about  how to detonate a nuclear device, building a large containment vessel at  Parchin for testing the feasibility of explosive compression. It called such tests  “strong indicators of possible weapon  development.”

NY Times