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Mousavian rejects reports on limiting number of centrifuges

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, April 6, IRNA
Iran-EU-Nuclear Talks
Head of Foreign Affairs Committee of Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Hossein Mousavian said on Wednesday that reports that Iran has proposed uranium enrichment to be limited only to 500 centrifuges is totally baseless.

Mousavian, who is a member of Iranian negotiating team with the European Union (EU), said that in the latest round of negotiations on March 23, had reached a satisfactory level to get out of the deadlock.

He said that on March 23, the committee had reached the point that there was no progress in terms of objective and strong guarantees from Europe to Iran and there was a possibility the negotiations to be driven to deadend.

The Europeans have undertaken to provide Iran with strong guarantees about political, economic, technological, nuclear and security cooperation, but, frankly, they did not come up with any important proposal except for minor ones to meet Iranian expectations from Europe.

OBJECTIVE GUARANTEES
Elaborating on the objective guarantees that the EU wants from Iran, he said that the Islamic Republic of Iran believes that Iran provided the international community with four guarantees: Signing up to Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signing up to IAEA safeguards agreement, Additional Protocol to NPT and transparent cooperation with IAEA.

"The European partners wanted objective guarantees to ensure that the fuel cycle will not be deviated to produce nuclear arms and we expected them to come up with proposals how to get guarantees from Iran, but, in the past three months of negotiations, they did not bring up any formula to get objective guarantees from Iran," he said.

He said that there was a possibility that negotiations on March 23 to face deadlock, but, Iran took an initiative which can make a breakthrough in terms of objective guarantees about fuel cycle.

TIME OF NEGOTIATIONS
Mousavian said that the time for the negotiations is very important to Iran and the Europeans also do not favor prolongation of negotiations and have reached the point that it may detrimental to the talks and may ruin the process.

"Today, the two parties have no other chance especially the Europeans should take maximum benefit of the current situation and it is unlikely to have extra opportunity," he said.

"Taking into account the entire views we discussed at the expert level about objective guarantees, I do not think there may be another approach except what Iran put forward on March 23."
"Iran believes that the two parties have no additional opportunity to successfully conclude the process. And it is a new chance that should be used optimally," Mousavian said.

"Iran's option is clear, the Europeans should put forward proposals for objective guarantees. Of course, they know that it is out of question to halt uranium enrichment forever.

"Iran welcomes any mechanism they come up with. It is the last chance to proceed with negotiations. And if the Europeans did not have any proposal for objective guarantees, Iran's offer on March 23 is the best and we do not know any alternative to it," Mousavian said.

1416/2322/1432
::IRNA No.049 06/04/2005 18:04 --End