Tehran insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful civilian purposes Iran nuclear talks ‘are positive’
Tehran insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful civilian purposes Iran and major world powers are gathering in Istanbul, Turkey, for a new round of talks on Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.
Officials hope to establish a “constructive process” for talks with Iran, but are not expecting major breakthroughs on key issues.
The UN has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Iran in recent years for not fully disclosing its programme.
The West suspects Iran aims to build nuclear weapons, which Tehran denies.
Iran insists its uranium enrichment programme is peaceful and complies with international law.
Negotiators from China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and US will meet their Iranian counterparts on Friday and Saturday in a restored Ottoman Palace on the edge of the Bosphorous.
The talks will be chaired by European Union foreign policy chief Baroness Catherine Ashton.
Ahead of the summit, US state department spokesman Mark Toner said Washington was “not expecting any big breakthroughs”.
“But we want to see a constructive process emerge that… leads to Iran engaging with the international community in a credible process and engaging and addressing the international community’s concerns about its nuclear programme.”
In recent years these negotiations have achieved almost nothing, says the BBC’s Iran correspondent James Reynolds, in Istanbul.
Because of this, Western diplomats suggest that they have set only one immediate goal for this round of talks.
Nuclear Fuel CycleMined uranium ore is purified and reconstituted into solid form known as yellowcakeYellowcake is chemically processed and converted into uranium hexafluoride gasGas is fed through centrifuges, where its isotopes separate and process is repeated until uranium is enrichedLow-level enriched uranium is used for nuclear fuelHighly enriched uranium can be used in nuclear weaponsIn depth: Nuclear fuel cycle
They want to persuade Iran to start getting rid of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium – estimated to be about three tonnes, our correspondent says.
With further enrichment, this would be enough to make several nuclear weapons.
Iranian officials suggest that the country is willing to give up some of its stockpile, but for negotiators from the world powers “some” is not enough, our correspondent says.
They want Iran to get rid of most of its stockpile in order to make sure that there is not enough enriched uranium left inside Iran to build even a single bomb.
In an effort to achieve this there are reports that the negotiators are preparing to revive an old offer – a fuel swap.
Under such a deal Iran would give up an agreed amount of its low-enriched uranium. In return the world powers would provide fuel for a research reactor in Tehran.
However, Istanbul would be the third time in the last year-and-a-half that the idea of a uranium-for-fuel swap has been addressed.
A first version of this deal was agreed in October 2009, but collapsed shortly afterwards.
In May 2010, Brazil and Turkey brokered another version on their own with Iran – but the deal was rejected by the West.
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