‘P5+1 want Iran expert-level meetings’

The latest round of two-day talks in Moscow between Iran and the P5+1 group – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany – were launched on Monday.

Iran’s nuclear energy program has topped the agenda of the negotiations, in which Tehran insists the P5+1 must recognize the Iranian right to enrich uranium and lift unilateral sanctions against the country.

Earlier, Iran had threatened to take the issue of the 20-percent uranium enrichment off the table if the other side failed to recognize Tehran’s nuclear rights.

The Moscow meetings came after three sessions of plenary talks in Baghdad in May and an earlier round of negotiations in the Turkish city of Istanbul in mid-April.

The two sides had previously held two rounds of talks, one in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 2010, and another in Istanbul in January 2011.

The Iranian negotiating delegation is led by Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Saeed Jalili, and the P5+1 group is headed by the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

Jalili has urged the West to respect Tehran’s nuclear rights in order for the Moscow meeting to succeed.

He has also expressed Iran’s readiness to cooperate and enter talks with “different countries on a variety of issues, including collaborations in the field of nuclear energy.”

The United States and some of its allies have imposed a series of sanctions against Iran, claiming that the country’s nuclear energy program may include a military component.

Tehran refutes the allegation, noting that frequent inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency have never found any evidence of diversion in Iran’s nuclear energy program toward military purposes.

MAB/PKH/IS

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