Last update - 00:00 15/09/2006
EU's Javier Solana reports progress in Iran nuclear talks
By The Associated Press and Reuters
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana insisted Friday that he was making progress in talks to persuade Iran to bring its nuclear program into line with international demands.
"We are really making progress," Solana told reporters. "Never before have we had the level of engagement, and a level of discussion of issues which are difficult as we are having now."
He said he hoped for a new meeting with Iran's top negotiator, Ali Larijani, in the coming days. Solana's and Larijani's deputies have been meeting everyday since Sunday, Solana told a news conference.
"I think the atmosphere is good," Solana said. "We don't want to lose the
momentum."
The United Nations has demanded that Iran suspend uranium enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for power stations or atomic weapons, as a condition for opening talks on a package of incentives including civil nuclear cooperation.
Tehran ignored an Aug. 31 deadline to halt sensitive nuclear work but President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struck a softer tone on Thursday, saying Iran was ready for "new conditions".
Solana said the definition of a suspension of enrichment was one of the outstanding issues, although not the only one.
Senior EU and Iranian officials were meeting every day to work on the remaining issues and would continue over the weekend, he said.
Solana, who had seven hours of talks with Larijani in Vienna last weekend, said he hoped to meet him again in the coming days and the next two weeks of diplomacy around the U.N. General Assembly in New York would be vital.
"We thought ... a little bit more time was needed in order to reach a consensus in his own country, amongst his own leadership ... in order to convey to me a possible positive answer to the question and to the ideas I put forward on Saturday," he said.
Solana said he was not worried that the United States, which has been pressing for U.N. sanctions over Iran's defiance on uranium enrichment, would lose patience.
"I don't think our American friends will be losing their patience," he said. "We are in the same boat. I am representing them. I am representing all the members of the Security Council. I am representing also the European Union, and I don't have a sense of losing patience."