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Talks between Iranian, IAEA experts to continue in Vienna

Teheran says the negotiations will be held in the spirit of the country’s "new approach"

Photo EPA/GEORG HOCHMUTH

Photo EPA/GEORG HOCHMUTH

VIENNA, October 29 (Itar-Tass) - Talks between representatives of Iran and experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency /IAEA/ that started out Monday are expected to continue here Tuesday. Heads of the two delegations have stressed the willingness of the sides to make the current round of negotiations fruitful.

Teheran says the negotiations will be held in the spirit of the country’s ‘new approach’.

On the first day, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano met with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Arakchi. This was the first high-level meeting after a long interval.

Amano underlined the importance of reaching an agreement in the course of the current round of negotiations, as it would support the optimistic moods around the policies that Teheran had been conducting in the previous few months.

Monday’s meeting is important for discussing the ways resolving the issues that still remain unresolved and have a long-term and highly complicated character, Amano said.

Abbas Arakchi said in a comment on the meeting with Amano that the main issue at present is to decide on what basis further cooperation between the two sides could be built. He voiced the hope that the talks at the level of experts would end with a convincing result.

A diplomatic source close to the negotiations told Itar-Tass it was not ruled out that Iran might refuse to work on a document spelling out a structured approach to determining a possible military component of the nuclear program and to give consent instead to the signing of a supplementary protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and join Clause 3.1 of the agreement on IAEA guarantees, which spells out the terms of the experts’ access to nuclear facilities.

Talks between Iran and the six negotiating countries /five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany/ and Iran at the level of experts are due to begin in Vienna Wednesday. They will take up two days.

A week later - November 7 and November 8 - a new round of consultations at the level of political directors will be held in Geneva.

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