TEHRAN, May 22. /TASS/. Iran will not yield to pressure from Western countries and will not make concessions in response to excessive demands at the nuclear negotiations, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Friday in Tehran.
"Iran will not succumb to pressure from the West at the talks on its nuclear program," he said. "The Iranian negotiating team feels obliged to abide by the [Islamic] establishment’s red lines in all issues in the nuclear talks," Press TV quotes him as saying.
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Concerning the US demand to include in the prospective comprehensive agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program special inspections of the Fordo site and military facilities unrelated to the nuclear issue, Zarif reiterated that the Iranian delegation had repeatedly stated that the Islamic Republic would not "allow the Western side to make excessive demands in the nuclear negotiations."
The issue of access of inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to Iran’s military facilities became a stumbling block during the latest rounds of the talks between Iran and the United States aimed at preparing the final agreement with a group of six world powers (five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany). Iran insists that the Additional Protocol to the Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA doesn’t grant the right to inspectors’ uncoordinated access to any facilities on Iran’s territory.
However, the United States interprets the document in its own way. In response to Tehran’s refusal to include in the prospective agreement the conditions permitting uncoordinated access to military sites unrelated to the nuclear program, US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said, "If we cannot agree in the final instance to something that meets our bottom line for what we need in terms of access, we’re not going to sign a final deal."
Commenting on this statement, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said that the dispute between Iran and Western countries had to be resolved in accordance with international law and the UN Charter on the basis of respect for sovereignty of its member-countries.