Iran's nuclear defiance shadows EU talks

TEHRAN: Iran dampened any hopes of a breakthrough in crunch talks on Wednesday with the EU on its nuclear programme by insisting it has no intention of yielding to the West's key demand on the atomic drive.   

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani is due to meet EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in the Turkish capital Ankara for their first face-to-face talks in over two months in a bid to break the deadlock in the nuclear crisis.   

The pair will examine if there is any scope for reopening negotiations to find an end to a five-year standoff that has raised tensions between Iran and the West and seen Tehran slapped with two sets of UN sanctions.   

"I expect to have a resumption of the talks that we had some time ago and see if we can move toward negotiations," Solana said.   

However comments by top Iranian officials have dealt a blow to any expectations that Tehran would give ground on the key Western demand that it suspends uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to make atomic weapons.   

"Why are they emphasising that Iran should suspend even for a month?" President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an interview late Tuesday with Iran's Arabic language channel Al-Alam, according to the Farsi transcript.   

"What is in it for them? Is it a legal matter? No, it is not a legal matter as it is not in charter of the UN nuclear watchdog," he said.

Ahmadinejad said there was no chance of the present conservative government repeating the suspension of enrichment imposed as a goodwill gesture by his reformist predecessor Mohammad Khatami.   

"In the past, Iran suspended and it resulted in the closing down of all of our research facilities for more than two-and-a-half years and we were all left behind in the scientific caravan," he said.   

The sensitivity of enriched uranium lies in the fact the substance can be used both to make nuclear fuel and, in highly enriched form, the explosive core of a nuclear bomb. Iran insists it only wants to produce civilian energy.   

Iran has also upped the stakes in a standoff that has seen it slapped with two sets of UN sanctions, saying it has reached an "industrial scale" of enrichment and wants over 50,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges.   

Larijani warned Solana not to insist on Iran suspending enrichment and come up with something new in the talks to recognise the progress claimed by Tehran on its nuclear programme.   

"Solana should not talk about preconditions. New conditions mean there are new requirements and new initiatives should be presented," Larijani said. "Artificial views and diplomatic dancing in talks will have no result."   

Iran faces a new UN Security Council deadline in one month to suspend enrichment, after which it could be hit with more sanctions. The United States has also never ruled out a military attack to bring Iran to heel.   

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini has however said he noted a "softening of tone" from Europe and even its arch enemy the United States in recent weeks, without specifying what statements he was referring to.   

The choice of Turkey as a venue, which Iranian media said came after intervention by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is also set to fuel hopes that Ankara can help with mediation efforts between the two sides.   

Solana and Larijani held several rounds of discussions last year which failed to find a solution to the crisis. They last met face-to-face for informal talks on the sidelines of a Munich security conference on February 11.