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Mohammad Javad Zarif: Iran has political will to reach final agreement
Iran won't discuss military programme, say officials
(about 9 hours later)
Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has insisted Iran has the political will to reach a deal as the next round of talks between Iran and six world powers to agree a first-step nuclear deal begins in Vienna.
Iran has made clear that it will only discuss nuclear issues and not its military programme as negotiations start for a comprehensive agreement aimed at settling a decades-long dispute over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
"We believe we can reach an agreement and we have come here with the political will to reach a final agreement," Zarif said on Monday after meeting the EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, in Vienna.
Iran's negotiating team, led by its foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and senior negotiators from Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the US – the group known as P5+1 – gathered in Vienna on Tuesday to find a workable framework before they could discuss details in future sessions.
"If all sides enter the talks with the political will to resolve the issue, we will be able to reach positive results but it will take time," he said in statements carried by the IRNA state news agency.
The Vienna talks come just a few months after both sides agreed on a landmark interim six month deal, but diplomats cautioned on Tuesday that this week's negotiations will mark the beginning of a potentially complicated and lengthy process.
The first high-level talks since an interim deal was agreed on 24 November – the result of months of bargaining – have been preceded by expressions of pessimism from the US and Iranian camps.
Zarif and another senior Iranian negotiator, Abbas Araqchi, said in separate interviews that the Vienna talks will be limited to Iran's nuclear activities, apparently dismissing calls from Israel and the US for Tehran's missile industry to be on the table.
A senior US official told reporters in Vienna on Monday: "These next days this week are the beginning of what will be a complicated, difficult and lengthy process."
"The criterion for the Vienna talks is the joint plan of action [the interim agreement], and no subject outside that framework could be on the agenda," Araqchi said, according to Iranian media.
"When the stakes are this high and the devil is truly in the detail, one has to take the time to ensure the confidence of the international community in the result. That can't be done in a day, a week or even a month in this situation."
Zarif has echoed Araqchi by saying: "As Iran's nuclear program has nothing to do with the military issues, the military issues have nothing to do with the nuclear program either."
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Tehran remained committed to an interim nuclear agreement but predicted the talks would fail to deliver an agreement.
As talks began on Tuesday, the EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, chaired a plenary session between Iran and six world powers which was followed by a number of bilaterals, including a meeting between Iran's negotiating team and the US delegation, led by Wendy Sherman, US undersecretary of state for political affairs.
In a speech in Tehran on Monday, Khamenei said: "What our foreign ministry and officials have started will continue and Iran will not violate its commitments … but this will not lead anywhere."
Araqchi said Iran had "good discussions" with the west.
He told a group of Iranians from the north-western city of Tabriz: "Some of the officials of the previous government, as well as the officials of this government, think the problem will be resolved if they negotiate the nuclear issue. I have said before … I am not optimistic about the negotiations. It will not lead anywhere, but I am not opposed either."
He said: "We are trying to set an agenda. If we can agree on an agenda in the next two to three days, it means we have taken the first step. And we will move forward based on that agenda."
Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, used the occasion to launch an attack on Iran. Netanyahu told a meeting of US Jewish leaders in Jerusalem: "Everybody is embracing Iran because of a smile. But Iran's moderation is a myth.
A senior US administration official said negotiations will be "complicated, difficult and lengthy". The official said: "It is probably as likely that we won't get an agreement as it is that we will. But these negotiations are the best chance we have ever had."
"It has to be stripped of the capacity to make nuclear weapons. What the deal that is being discussed today should achieve is one simple thing: zero centrifuges. Not one. Zero enrichment. They don't need any centrifuges and they don't have a right for enrichment."
The IAEA chief, Yukiya Amano, also met with Zarif in Vienna On Tuesday. Earlier in the week he signalled that one sticking point in the talks was for Iran to sign the IAEA additional protocol which allows unannounced inspections of nuclear or suspect sites.
Under this cloud, Iran's nuclear negotiating team, led by Zarif and senior negotiators from Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the US – the group known as P5+1 – will meet in Vienna on Tuesday, hoping to find a permanent resolution to the lengthy dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme. Ashton will resume her role as the convenor of talks on behalf of the six world powers, negotiating directly with Zarif.
"The implementation of the Additional Protocol is very important to provide assurance that all nuclear activity in Iran is for a peaceful purpose but we are not yet at that point," he told the news website Breaking Defense on Monday.
Zarif said he would meet the Austrian president and foreign minister before the scheduled nuclear negotiations on Tuesday. He said Iranian people's rights should be preserved in any final agreement, an apparent reference to what Tehran has repeatedly called Iranians' "right to enrich". "What is important to us is reaching a final agreement based on the preservation of the Iranian nation's rights and interests," Zarif said in Vienna, according to Iran's English-language state television, Press TV.
Before the talks began, Zarif insisted Iran had the political will to reach a deal.
The Vienna negotiations take place a few months after Tehran agreed to roll back its nuclear activities in exchange for partial relief from sanctions under a six-month interim agreement struck in Geneva last year.
"We believe we can reach an agreement and we have come here with the political will to reach a final agreement," Zarif said on Monday after meeting the EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, for dinner in Vienna.
Both sides have so far shown commitment to the interim agreement and have made the first step in implementing it. Last month, Iranian scientists halted all enrichment of uranium to 20% inside the country as part of the deal, while the EU reciprocated by easing restrictions on trade in petrochemicals, precious metals and on the provision of insurance for oil shipments.
Meanwhile, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, made a strongly worded attack on Iran on the eve of the Vienna negotiations – expressing deep scepticism about the outcome of the talks and calling for more pressure to ensure it has neither centrifuges nor the right to enrichment.
As part of the deal, Iran has also received $550m (£330m), the first instalment in $4.2bn worth of frozen oil revenues that the Islamic republic is expected to receive over a period of time.
Netanyahu told a meeting of US Jewish leaders in Jerusalem: "If Iran perches itself as a threshold state in which it has all the elements of a nuclear weapon in place, they'll just have to do one little twist of the knob to get final enrichment of fissile material that is the core of a nuclear weapon, then all they'll have to do is take these components from one side of a room and another side of a room, put them together and in a very short time, days or weeks or perhaps even hours, they'd have a nuclear weapon."
In his speech on Monday, Khamenei said recent remarks by US senators and senior officials were an indication that America was reluctant to find peace with Iran. He accused America of meddling in Iran's internal affairs for decades.
He said: "The nuclear issue is an excuse for America to continue its animosity. Now the American spokesmen are bringing up the issues of human rights and missiles."
Khamenei said even if the nuclear issue was settled, the US would continue to confront Iran on other grounds such as human rights or its missile industry.
Despite the six-month agreement, prospects of a final deal are at risk from conservative factions in the US and Iran. In Washington, a significant number of senators have pushed the Obama administration for more sanctions while in Tehran, hardliners have attacked their president, Hassan Rouhani, for his nuclear diplomacy.
Opponents of Rouhani's government, attending rallies marking the 35th anniversary of the Islamic revolution last week, distributed leaflets that asked whether his administration had made too many concessions.
However, Khamenei's backing of the interim deal and the ongoing negotiations has created little room for the internal opposition to cause any significant hurdle. But Khamenei has erred on the safe side by neither fully embracing nor opposing the talks.
