President: IR Iran ready for Moscow talks

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, June 17, IRNA -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to negotiate with the Group 5+1 in an upcoming meeting slated for June 18-19 in Moscow about 20-percent uranium enrichment.

President Ahmadinejad made the remarks in an exclusive interview with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine in Tehran on Sunday.

“Building confidence is a mutual issue and we should see what does the other side of the negotiating table does and if they take a positive step, we are all ready to cooperate and we hope to take concrete steps in Moscow,” the president added.

Asked about Iran’s stance in the upcoming Group 5+1 talks in Moscow, President Ahmadinejad noted that the stance of the Islamic Republic of Iran is transparent as per the previous talks held in Baghdad and Istanbul.

“We believe that all people should enjoy equal rights. We have always been looking for holding dialogue and we are still pursuing the same path,” he added.

The president noted that the Islamic Republic of Iran hopes that good steps should be taken for building mutual trust in the upcoming talks in Moscow.

Referring to the fact that the animosity of the US and European countries with Iran is not something new, President Ahmadinejad pointed out that its is for about 60 years ago that the enemies of the Iranian nation engineered a coup in Iran and the same people who instigated the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein against Iran, they continued to their animosity with the Iranian nation on different pretexts after the Iraqi-imposed war against Iran failed.

The Iranian team of negotiators headed by Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Secretary Saeed Jalili arrived in the Russian capital, Moscow on Sunday morning to attend two-day talks with the world's six major powers.

Two days of talks between Iran and G5+1 members plus Germany will begin on Monday. Delegations of the six world powers are led by EU foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton.

Iran and the Group 5+1 held several rounds of talks in Baghdad last month. The Baghdad meeting came after Iran and the six world powers resumed talks in Istanbul, Turkey, in April.

It should be noted that Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of 'trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program,' while they have never presented any compelling evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes.

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