Six world powers converged on Vienna on Thursday to break a deadlock on Iran’s nuclear programme after the United States made a dramatic offer to join talks with Tehran if it suspends uranium enrichment.
Diplomats are hopeful that at the meeting of the US, Europe, Russia and China a compromise can be reached over Washington’s demand for Tehran to first suspend uranium enrichment.
The US took a major step towards winning a consensus to limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday said Washington was now ready to join multiparty talks with Iran.
The talks would be along with European Union negotiators Britain, Germany and France, provided that Tehran suspend uranium enrichment, the process that makes fuel for nuclear power reactors, but also atom-bomb material.
The announcement marked a sharp change in US policy, 26 years after diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran were broken off.
The US has labelled Iran part of an ”axis of evil” of nations seeking weapons of mass destruction, but has made little headway against its nuclear programme, despite a more than three-year-old investigation of it by the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency.
Non-proliferation analyst Mark Fitzpatrick said Washington’s turnaround towards talks with Iran was a ”win-win situation for the Bush administration”, which has now ”made a significant concession to agree to engagement as the Russians and many others have been asking”.
Fitzpatrick, speaking to Agence France-Presse from London’s Institute for International and Strategic Studies think-tank, said Washington ”wants the Russians and Chinese to buy into a UN Security Council resolution” that will require Iran to suspend uranium enrichment.
Iran has steadfastly refused such a halt in what it says is a peaceful effort to generate electricity and on Thursday rejected the US conditions, although it said it was ready for talks.
But diplomats in Vienna were already talking about a compromise over this, namely that Iran could keep spinning the centrifuges that enrich uranium but leave them empty of the feedstock uranium gas.
One diplomat said the Iranians have, since enriching some uranium in April, stopped feeding their 164-centrifuge cascade in Natanz, in what could be a normal pause in developing enrichment capabilities.
”Renewing feeding is a matter of decision,” the diplomat said, with others saying extending the pause could give Iran a chance to say it is continuing its enrichment research by running the centrifuges empty, while the US could claim that actual enrichment has been suspended.
The other key issue is US insistence that Russia and China sign on to Security Council sanctions against Iran if the Islamic Republic refuses to accept a package of incentives it would receive in return for guaranteeing it would not make nuclear weapons.
The package, drafted by EU negotiators Britain, France and Germany, is to be discussed on Thursday when the EU-3, along with the US, meets with Russia and China in Vienna.
Diplomats in Vienna said US participation in multiparty talks depends on Russia and China agreeing to impose UN sanctions on Iran if Tehran fails to show that its nuclear programme is peaceful.
China on Thursday welcomed the US offer to join talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, but said it was still opposed to ”arbitrary” sanctions, in comments by foreign ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao.
Russia, meanwhile, called on Iran to respond ”constructively” to the US call, its foreign ministry said in a statement.
A senior European diplomat said the US would have a hard time getting Russian and China to agree to a firm commitment to sanctions, as is outlined in a list of sanctions the EU-3 has drawn up to go along with the incentives package.
But the diplomat said that Thursday’s meeting, while ”important, is not the end of the story”.
Fitzpatrick said Russia and China ”don’t have to sign up to sanctions right now”.
”It’s a two-step process. What the US wants is Russian and Chinese agreement on a plan-forward that includes as a next step a Security Council resolution making suspension of uranium enrichment mandatory with a short deadline, at the end of which would come a second resolution endorsing sanctions,” Fitzpatrick said.
The European diplomat said: ”What we get now is momentum. Momentum is created. That’s the positive thing. But the momentum is not the solution.
”The hope is that it could initiate a positive reaction,” the diplomat said. — AFP
