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TEHRAN. – Iranian Foreign Ministry officials said yesterday that Iran will preserve and maintain its “peaceful” nuclear programme.
Talking to reporters at the weekly Press conference, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said “Final settlement of nuclear issue and preserving our country’s peaceful nuclear programme top our agenda” in the negotiations with the P5+1 group, including the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany.
In the meantime, Iran will remove “some logical concerns” of the P5+1 group, she reiterated. Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif said that Iran has reasserted its right to uranium enrichment and that the US has come to the conclusion that the right is not up for discussion, Press TV reported yesterday.
“For a decade, there was only one concept in the West’s mind, that there existed a ‘zero enrichment’ option only, and that Iran’ s capability in uranium enrichment had to be stopped,” Zarif said, adding that “Now, the United States, though belatedly, has come to the conclusion that it would not achieve such a goal.”
Zarif said Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also noted that the United Sates had to accept uranium enrichment in Iran as a fact which cannot be overlooked.
In addition, Iranian nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araqchi, said no part of Iran’s nuclear energy programme stops, according to the report.
“Nothing gets stopped or dismantled in Iran’s nuclear program, and everything and every activity will continue in the same state or situation as it has been. It just does not expand,” Araqchi was quoted as saying.
Referring to the interim nuclear deal clinched between Iran and the six other countries in Geneva last November, Araqchi said both sides decided “to stay where we are and do not proceed, meaning that they do not ratify any other new sanctions against Iran and, in exchange, we do not develop our nuclear program quantity-wise, just at the same time as the qualitative development of our nuclear program in the area of research and development continues. “
“What we should do, and which is interpreted as a cessation and an about face, is the suspension of the production of 20-percent enrichment and the changing of our 20-percent-enriched materials to uranium oxide or less than five-percent enriched uranium.”
On Jan. 20, Iran and major world powers started the implementation of the first step of the Geneva interim deal clinched on November 24, 2013.
As a part of the interim deal, Iran suspended 20 percent uranium enrichment as of January 20. Iran also started the process to dilute and oxidise its 196-kg-stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium.
In return, the West began to remove some sanctions on Iran’s monetary and petrochemical sectors. About the place of the upcoming nuclear talks, Afkham said Tuesday that the venue for fresh round of nuclear talks between Iran and the world powers has not been finalised.
“It has not been finalised yet. Announcement will be made about the exact time and the venue of the talks,” Afkham told reporters.
Also, Araqchi said a definite agreement has not been reached on the time and venue of the next round of the nuclear negotiations between Iran and six world powers.
On Monday, the official IRNA news agency reported that Iran and the world powers would resume nuclear negotiations in New York in February.
“The negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 group will be held in New York to the end of (the Iranian month of) Bahman (before February 19), which aims at reaching a final agreement,” a source close to Iranian nuclear negotiating team was quoted as saying by IRNA.
Yesterday, Inspectors of the UN nuclear watchdog (IAEA) arrived in Iran’s capital of Tehran to visit the Gachin yellow cake mine in southern country, spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi was quoted as saying by official IRNA news agency.
The team of the IAEA inspectors will leave Tehran for Bandar Abbas in southern Hormuzgan province on Wednesday to inspect the mine, Kamalvandi said.
The inspection takes place in line with implementing an agreement signed between head of the AEOI Ali-Akbar Salehi and the IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano in Tehran on November 11, 2013. – Xinhua.
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