Pool photo by
The European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Iran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili, at the start of the talks.
ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Talks between Iran and six world powers over its nuclear program ended on Wednesday with an agreement to convene technical experts in Istanbul on March 18 and return to Almaty for full negotiations among the delegations on April 5 and 6, a senior Western diplomat said.
Iran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili, said that modest progress had been achieved. The participants “had come back with more realistic proposals that come a little closer to Iran’s position,” he said. “Their proposals seem more realistic and positive.” He added that there have been “some changes in their viewpoint.”
The two days of talks here had been convened to to get a clear response from Tehran to an offer of step-by-step sanctions relief in return for confidence-building measures from Iran, Western diplomats said.
They cautioned that there was little substantive progress other than Iran’s willingness to study the proposals delivered here and added that the technical meeting in Istanbul is to explain the proposals in detail before returning to Almaty to hear Iran’s response. Senior Western diplomats have said that this week’s meeting would be a low-level success if it produced a specific agreement to meet again soon so that there would be an element of momentum to the negotiations. The talks have been intermittent since beginning in October 2009, with the last meeting eight months ago in Moscow.
The six powers want Iran, as a first step, to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent and to export its stockpile of that more highly enriched uranium, which can be more quickly turned into bomb-grade material. The six also want Iran to shut down its Fordo enrichment facility, built deep into a mountain, which Iran has steadily refused to do. In return, the six — the five permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany — have offered Iran further sanctions relief, reportedly including permission to resume its gold and precious metals trade as well as some international banking activity and petroleum trade.
The ultimate goal of talks with Iran is to get the country to comply with Security Council resolutions demanding that it stop enrichment altogether until it can satisfy the International Atomic Energy Agency that it has no weapons program and no hidden enrichment sites. In return, all sanctions — which have so far cost Iran 8 percent of its gross domestic product, sharply increased inflation and collapsed the value of the Iranian currency, the rial — would be lifted.
No one expected that kind of breakthrough in this round, especially with Iranian presidential elections coming in June and any major concession likely to be perceived as weakness. But the hope was for an incremental movement toward Iranian compliance in return for a modest lifting of sanctions.
The six nations talking with Iran have remained united and share an impatience over what they perceive to be its delaying tactics. The Russian envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who has been most opposed to increasing sanctions, said Tuesday that time was running out for the talks. He told the Interfax news agency that easing sanctions would be possible only if Iran could assure the world that its nuclear program was for exclusively peaceful purposes.
“There is no certainty that the Iranian nuclear program lacks a military dimension, although there is also no evidence that there is a military dimension,” he said.
He said Moscow hoped the talks would now move into a phase of “bargaining,” rather than just offering proposals. “There needs to be a political will to move into that phase,” Mr. Ryabkov said. “We call on all participants not to lose any more time.”
Tuesday’s talks began at 1:30 p.m. with a plenary session that lasted about 2 hours, 30 minutes, largely taken up with the six laying out their latest modified proposal to the Iranians. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, is the chairwoman and speaks for the six. There was also discussion of the proposal by the Iranians and some questions asked, the diplomats said.
There were a few brief bilateral meetings with the Iranian delegation by the Russians, British and Germans, diplomats said, but not with the French or the Americans. The one and only bilateral meeting between the Americans and the Iranians in the course of the talks was in October 2009 in Geneva, although the chief American negotiator now, Wendy R. Sherman, the under secretary for political affairs in the State Department, has repeatedly said that she is open to another such meeting.
