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Russia hopes for success of Iran, G5+1 talks

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Dec 21, IRNA -- Russian Foreign Ministry in a statement released here on Thursday voiced hope that the upcoming Iran-G5+1 talks slated for January 2013 would bear constructive results.

Russia's RIA Novosti news agency cited a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying the world powers, the United States, Russia, France, Britain, Germany and China, were still negotiating with the Islamic Republic of Iran on a possible date and venue for the talks.

'Currently negotiations are underway with Tehran on the place and date (of negotiations),' the foreign ministry spokesman told RIA Novosti.

'We hope that this work will be completed in the near future and such a meeting will take place in next year's January.'

The last round of big power talks with Iran held in Moscow in June ended with constructive results.

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 corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.

Tehran has dismissed the West's demand as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path.

Political observers believe that the United States has remained at loggerheads with Iran mainly over the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran's nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for the other third-world countries. Washington has laid much pressure on Iran to make it give up the most sensitive and advanced part of the technology, which is uranium enrichment, a process used for producing nuclear fuel for power plants.

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(background courtesy of Fars News Agency)
Islamic Republic News Agency/IRNA NewsCode: 80465484