IAEA to resume talks with Iran in December

AFP

VIENNA THE UN atomic agency said on Friday it will next month hold its first talks with Iran since August over Tehran’s contested nuclear programme, in a first sign of renewed diplomatic activity since the US election.

“The IAEA and Iran have agreed to hold further talks on 13 December in Tehran,” International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Gill Tudor said.

“The aim is to conclude the structured approach to resolving outstanding issues related to Iran’s nuclear programme.” The Vienna-based IAEA wants Tehran to address evidence it says it has suggesting that until 2003, and possibly since, Iran conducted research work “relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.” A parallel diplomatic push by six world powers has been aimed at persuading Iran to scale back parts of its current nuclear programme because of suspicions — denied by Tehran — that it wants the bomb.

Efforts on both “tracks” have however effectively been on hold in recent months because of campaigning for the US presidential election on Tuesday won by incumbent Barack Obama.

The last high-level talks between Iran and the P5+1 — the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany — took place in Moscow in June. The last IAEA-Iran talks were in August.

“The (US) administration was in a very defensive position for the past six months,” Mark Hibbs from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said this week. “It was also difficult for Iran because they didn’t want to negotiate with someone who might not be in office after November.” Analysts and diplomats told AFP after Obama’s reelection this week that a new round of P5+1 talks was possible before the end of the year or in early 2013.

Experts also see bilateral US-Iranian talks as possible.

However, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said there were no plans yet for a meeting of the P5+1 group, and again categorically denied as “ridiculous” reports of secret talks between Washington and Tehran.

“We commend the IAEA for keeping at it, and we call on Iran to do what it needs to do to meet the international community’s concerns,” she told journalists.

An announcement by Iran this week that it will attend a forum in Finland in December on creating a Middle East free of nuclear weapons was also interpreted as a sign that with Obama re-elected Tehran may be ready to talk again.