UNITED
NATIONS: Iran's president on Friday urged faster progress at nuclear
talks between his country and six world powers, joining other top
international officials who say the current round has failed to make
substantial headway toward sealing a deal by the November 24 deadline.Without
mentioning the US by name, Hassan Rouhani suggested agreement could end
the more than three-decade deep-freeze in relations between Washington
and Tehran and mark "the beginning of a path toward collaboration and
cooperation.""There
have been steps forward, but they haven't been significant," Rouhani
told reporters, arguing that his country had shown the necessary
flexibility and that it now was up to the US and five other nations to
advance the talks. "Time is short," he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov struck a more optimistic note on
the talks, saying separately that both sides were interested in
resolving "the remaining small but extremely important issues." But
eight days into the current session, he seemed alone in that relatively
upbeat assessment. Negotiations
between the six powers and Iran are being held on the sidelines of the
UN General Assembly's ministerial meeting and foreign ministers
attending had been expected to join the talks.
But that was
called off for what French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said was a
lack of "significant advances." Iranian media quoted Iranian deputy
foreign minister Abbas Araghchi as saying the sides had "not yet arrived
at a mutual understanding that can serve as the basis of an agreement."
Without judging progress, US secretary of state John Kerry said his "fervent hope" was that a deal would be struck. The
talks remain stuck over uranium enrichment. Iran says it needs a robust
enrichment program to make reactor fuel and for other peaceful purposes,
but the US and its allies fear the program's other application — making
the fissile core of a nuclear weapon.
While eager to reach an
agreement in return for an end to crippling nuclear-related sanctions,
Iranian officials insist they will never agree to gutting their
enrichment capabilities. Insisting that the sanctions must "be melted
away," Rouhani nonetheless said Iran will never accept any agreement
that requires it to stop enriching uranium.
The US came to the
current round demanding that Tehran limit its enrichment output at what
roughly 1,500 of its mainstay centrifuge machines would produce. Iran
insists the output should remain at the level produced at the
approximately 10,000 centrifuges it now operates — and be allowed to
expand more than ten-fold over the next decade.
With the clock
ticking down on the deadline, diplomats have told The Associated Press
that the US is considering a new approach. They said the tentative
proposal would allow Tehran to keep nearly half of the centrifuges
already spinning but reduce the stock of uranium gas fed into the
machines to the point where it would take more than a year of enriching
to create enough material for a nuclear warhead.
The diplomats
emphasized that the proposal is only one of several being discussed by
the six powers — the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany —
and has not yet been formally submitted to the Iranians.
Other
ideas also include letting Iran have more than 1,500 machines but
removing or destroying much of the infrastructure needed to make them
run — connecting circuits, pipes used to feed uranium gas and other
auxiliary equipment. Both
would allow the Iranians to claim that they did not compromise on vows
that they would never destroy existing enrichment capabilities, while
keeping intact American demands that the program be downgraded to a
point where it could not be quickly turned to making bombs.
But
even if a solution is found, the sides still differ on how long Iran's
nuclear program should be constrained, with Tehran seeking less than a
decade and the demanding Americans substantially more.
Reflecting Iran's opposition to deep cuts, Rouhani said the main issue
was not decreasing enrichment but how long "Iran is willing to limit its
capability, and after what period they can expand upon those
activities."
The fates of a reactor under construction near the
city of Arak and of an underground enrichment facility at Fordo are
also up in the air. The US and its Western allies want the reactor
converted to reduce to a minimum of its production of plutonium, an
alternate pathway to nuclear arms. And they insist that the Fordo plant
be shuttered or used for something other than enrichment because it is
fortified and thought to be impervious to air attacks.
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