World Jewish News

5+1 countries to meet Iran this week in Istanbul over nuclear program

World powers and Iran will hold the next round of negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear programme on April 14 in Istanbul, a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on Sunday.
Ashton represents the 5+1 Group of United States, Russia,China, France, Britain and Germany in talks with Iran.
"We have agreed to launch talks in Istanbul on April 14," Michael Mann said.
"We hope that this first round will produce a conductive environment for concrete progress. We are of course aiming at a sustained process," he said.
The last meeting between the two sides took also place in Istanbul in January 2011.
On Sunday, Iran said it will not close its Fordo nuclear power facility, which is built deep into a mountain near the holy city of Oom, and it will not give up higher-level uranium enrichment, which are reported to be key demands that the world powers will present at the meeting.
Fereydoon Abbasi Davani, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, called the Western diplomats’ demands "irrational."
Davani said in an interview with the Iranian ISNA news agency that the Fordow facility had to be built underground because of the West’s threats to attack the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.
"If they do not threaten us and guarantee that no aggression will occur, then there would be no need for countries to build facilities underground. They should change their behavior and language," he said.
Davani added that Iran would continue to produce uranium enriched to 20%, but not "more than we need, because it is not in our benefit to produce it and keep it."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Iran is using the upcoming talks to "delay and deceive."
He called for Iran to dismantle Oom, completely halt uranium enrichment and remove higher level enriched uranium from the country.
In a report published on Sunday, an Iranian official for the first time admitted that his country could indeed produce nuclear weapons, but was not currently doing so.
"Iran has the scientific and technological capability to produce a nuclear weapon, but will never choose this path," Parliament member Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghadam said.
Although not a member of the government, Moghadam’s comments appeared on an official government website. Iranian leaders had previously rejected allegations that any part of its nuclear program was involved in weapons development.
Iran has refused to open its secret nuclear sites to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog. The IAEA issued a report last year that concluded some of Iran’s nuclear work could only be for military purposes. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said last month the IAEA "continues to have serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that while sanctions are hurting the Iranian economy, they have so far not succeeded in stopping its nuclear program.
"The Iranians tried to exploit negotiations to buy time, stall, and mislead the Western powers," he said. "They tried to do this in the past. I hope that the leading world powers, headed by the United States, have learned their lesson."
In a CNN interview on Sunday, Barak said Israel had told both the US and the Europeans that it "expected the threshold for successful negotiations to be clear," namely that there is "no more enrichment to 20%," and that all uranium enriched to 20% be removed to a "trusted" neighboring country.
Barak explained that Israel’s demand that Iran also surrender the majority of its uranium enriched to 3.5% was to prevent Tehran’s ability to still develop a nuclear weapon, albeit at a slower pace.
"It’s clear that the depth of the sanctions is different from what we had in the past and it has its impact... But I don’t believe that this amount of sanctions and pressure will bring the Iranian leadership to the conclusion that they have to stop their nuclear military program," the Defence Minister said in the CNN interview.

EJP