Iran Agrees to More Nuclear Talks With U.S. and Allies/Iran Agrees to Send Enriched Uranium to Russia

Iran Agrees to More Nuclear Talks With U.S. and Allies
By STEVEN ERLANGER and MARK LANDLER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: October 1, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/world/middleeast/02nuke.html?_r=1&ref=global-home


GENEVA — Iran and the big powers opposed to its nuclear program appeared to make progress Thursday in talks that included the highest-level direct discussions with the United States in many years, with both sides agreeing to hold further negotiations and the Iranians pledging to allow foreign inspectors into a newly disclosed uranium enrichment factory.

The talks, held in Geneva, defused some of the tensions that have escalated rapidly in recent weeks over Iran’s nuclear intentions and represented a victory of sorts for the Iranian government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose own legitimacy has not been universally recognized since his disputed re-election in June.

President Obama on Thursday afternoon called the landmark talks a “constructive beginning,” but warned Iran that he was prepared to move quickly to sanctions if negotiations over Iran’s nuclear ambitions dragged on. Trying to strike a firm tone, Mr. Obama said that he also expected Iran to allow international weapons inspectors into its nuclear facility at Qom within two weeks.

“We’re not interested in talking for the sake of talking,” Mr. Obama said in a remarks to reporters in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room. “If Iran does not take concrete steps, we are not prepared to talk indefinitely.”

The tone of the discussions, at least, was considerably more positive than just a week ago, when the United States and its European allies were threatening Iran with tough new sanctions if it refused to halt its uranium enrichment program, which they suspect is meant for creating atomic weapons.

Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief and the meeting’s host, said that Iran had pledged to “cooperate fully and immediately” with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the I.A.E.A, in allowing inspectors into its new facility, and Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, called the discussions “good talks that will be a framework for better talks.”

Like President Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the American secretary of state, struck a cautious tone. “It was a productive day but the proof of that has not yet come to fruition, so we’ll wait and continue to press our point of view and see what Iran decides to do,” she said.

Speaking at the United Nations, the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said that Iran would be ready to enhance the level of the talks up to that of a summit meeting, meaning that heads of state would be involved. Describing Thursday’s discussions as “constructive,” he said they focused on a wide range of issues Iran had laid out in its five-page proposal for talks, which included a general goal of global nuclear disarmament but no specifics about the Iranian nuclear program.

Held at the isolated Villa Le Saugy, an 18th-century building in the countryside here, Thursday’s meeting brought together Iran, the five members of the United Nations Security Council — China, Russia, the United States, France and Britain — along with Germany and the European Union for what one senior American official called the beginning of an “extraordinarily difficult process.”

The United States was represented at the Thursday meeting by the under secretary of state for political affairs, William J. Burns, and Iran by Mr. Jalili. Mr. Jalili’s direct counterpart is Mr. Solana.

During the morning session, Mr. Burns had a one-on-one meeting with Mr. Jalili, said Robert Wood, the deputy State Department spokesman. Mr. Wood said he had no other details on the private meeting.

Mr. Burns, a career diplomat with a long history in the Middle East, attended a similar meeting with Iran in July 2008 during the Bush administration, though he had instructions not to negotiate.

Washington had hoped to begin bilateral talks with Iran on a range of issues, among them trade and Tehran’s support for Palestinian, Lebanese and Iraqi insurgent and terrorist groups, including Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

But after new disclosures of a hidden Iranian enrichment facility dug deep into a guarded mountain near the holy city of Qum, the focus shifted to persuading Iran to permit serious nuclear inspections and suspend its nuclear enrichment program.

Mr. Solana said Iran had also agreed to export its own low-enriched uranium from one specific facility, the Russian-built plant at Natanz, for further enrichment to make isotopes for medical purposes. Mr. Solana portrayed that agreement as progress toward Iran agreeing to limit its own enrichment activities.

Iran maintains that all of its uranium enrichment is for peaceful purposes, mostly for energy production.

Mr. Obama said Iran’s signal that it would be willing to transfer low enriched uranium to a third party “would be a first step.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Mottaki, the foreign minister, visited his country’s unofficial embassy in Washington, the first trip to the capital by an Iranian of that rank in a decade.

The visit by Mr. Mottaki, who had been at the United Nations, was approved by the White House, and it was seen as an effort to help thaw the atmosphere as the Obama administration puts its policy of engagement with Iran to the test. Mr. Mottaki, however, said Thursday that he had only gone to ensure that the Iranian diaspora in America were being well looked after.

Iran maintains a diplomatic outpost in the Pakistani Embassy in Washington. The last time an Iranian foreign minister was permitted to make such a visit was in the late 1990s, during the Clinton administration.

“It is an unusual coincidence; whether it’s a happy coincidence, we’ll see,” said Philip J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman. “It doesn’t make the serious issues we confront any easier, but if it’s taken as a small gesture and contributes in some way, that will be terrific.”

Many diplomats and analysts believe that the Qum facility is only one of a series of hidden installations that Iran has constructed alongside its public ones for what is considered to be a military program. Iran insists its program is purely peaceful and insists on its rights to enrich, but has regularly lied to the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency about its facilities.

The United States was thought to be likely to offer Iran a repackaged version of something it has offered before: an agreement to hold off on new sanctions if the Iranians agree to freeze their enrichment of uranium, so that serious negotiations can take place. The West remains wary of talking while Iran continues enrichment, fearing a negotiation without end or result.

The proposal had not interest the Iranians before. But officials planned to try again, hoping that a new American administration, the pressure from disclosure of the nuclear enrichment complex and internal divisions from Iran’s chaotic elections and the ensuing crackdown on demonstrators will make it more acceptable, American and European officials said.

But some American officials believed that the turmoil in Iran would make its government less willing to compromise and appear weak.

Steven Erlanger reported from Geneva and Mark Landler from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Helene Cooper from Washington, Sharon Otterman from New York and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.







Iran Agrees to Send Enriched Uranium to Russia
By STEVEN ERLANGER and MARK LANDLER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: October 1, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/world/middleeast/02nuke.html?th&emc=th


GENEVA — Iran agreed on Thursday in talks with the United States and other major powers to open its newly revealed uranium enrichment plant near Qum to international inspection in the next two weeks and to send most of its openly declared enriched uranium outside Iran to be turned into fuel for a small reactor that produces medical isotopes, senior American and other Western officials said.

Iran’s agreement in principle to export most of its enriched uranium for processing — if it happens — would represent a major accomplishment for the West, reducing Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon quickly and buying more time for negotiations to bear fruit.

If Iran has secret stockpiles of enriched uranium, however, the accomplishment would be hollow, a senior American official conceded.

The officials described the long day of talks here with Iran, the first such discussions in which the United States has participated fully, as a modest success on a long and complicated road. Iran had at least finally engaged with the big powers on its nuclear program after more than a year and had agreed to some tangible, confidence-building steps before another meeting with the same participants before the end of this month.

But despite the relatively promising outcome, the Obama administration was at pains to strike a cautious tone, given Iran’s history of duplicity, its crackdown on its own people after the tainted June presidential elections and President Obama’s concern about being perceived as naïve or susceptible to a policy of Iranian delays.

Mr. Obama, speaking in Washington, called the talks “constructive,” but warned Tehran that he was prepared to move quickly to more stringent sanctions if negotiations over Iran’s nuclear ambitions dragged on.

“We’re not interested in talking for the sake of talking,” Mr. Obama told reporters in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room. “If Iran does not take steps in the near future to live up to its obligations, then the United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely.”

France and Britain have spoken of December as an informal deadline for Iran to negotiate seriously about stopping enrichment and cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency. American officials say that timeline is “about right,” but Iran continues to insist that it has the right to enrich uranium for what it calls a purely civilian program.

Mr. Obama said Tehran must allow international inspectors into the site near Qum within the next two weeks, a timeline Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, agreed to here.

The atomic energy agency’s director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, will travel to Tehran this weekend to discuss the details and timing of the inspections, officials said. But the Americans also want Iran to cooperate with the inspectors and make personnel and documents about the site near Qum available.

Besides the scheduling of another meeting, the main practical accomplishment on Thursday was Iran’s agreement in principle — to be worked out by experts later this month in Vienna — to ship what American officials called “most” of its declared stockpile of lightly enriched uranium to Russia and France to be turned into nuclear fuel.

While American officials refused to specify the amount, other Western officials said it could be 1,200 kilograms, or more than 2,600 pounds, of enriched uranium, which could be as much as 75 percent of Iran’s declared stockpile. While there may be hidden stocks of enriched uranium, such a transfer, if it occurs, “buys some time” for further negotiations, a senior American official said.

Given the assessment that Iran has made enough low-enriched uranium to produce at least one nuclear weapon at some time in the future, a sharp reduction in its stockpile would be “a confidence-building measure to alleviate tensions and buy us some diplomatic space,” the official said.

Israel, the nation most concerned about a nuclear-armed Iran, has been informed of the discussions, another American official said.

Iran’s uranium is enriched to about 3.5 to 5 percent, the officials said; the Tehran reactor for making medical isotopes, last powered by Argentine-made fuel in 1993, needs uranium enriched to 19.75 percent, still far below weapons grade. And that uranium must then be fabricated into metal rods for the reactor.

Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it needed fuel for the Tehran reactor before December 2010. Washington, with its allies, pushed the agency to offer Iran the fuel, but made from Iran’s own enriched uranium as a feedstock. Mr. Jalili agreed to that in principle on Thursday.

The talks were between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — as well as Germany, and led by the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana.

The tone of the discussions, held just outside Geneva, was considerably more positive than just a week ago, after the United States revealed the existence of the uranium enrichment site near Qum and, with its European allies, threatened Iran with tough new sanctions if it refused to halt its uranium enrichment program, which they suspect is meant for creating atomic weapons.

“This was a day very much for the engagement track of the two-track strategy,” a senior American official said, with the second track — increased sanctions — to be discussed only if this new round of negotiations founders.

After a plenary session in the morning, the participants adjourned to a lunch where informal discussions continued, followed by three hours of informal bilateral meetings. Those included a 45-minute session between the chief American diplomat here, Under Secretary of State William J. Burns, and Mr. Jalili, the highest level United States-Iranian talks in three decades.

Mr. Burns raised a range of topics, including the nuclear dispute and the plant near Qum and human-rights issues, American officials said, while the Iranians raised their own concerns, including the need for a world free of nuclear bombs and access to peaceful nuclear energy for all.

Mr. Jalili, in a news conference, called the discussions “good talks that will be a framework for better talks,” and expressed satisfaction that the world had engaged with Iran’s global agenda, which includes nuclear disarmament. He denied that there were any other Iranian nuclear facilities hidden from the I.A.E.A.

Many diplomats and analysts believe that the plant near Qum is only one of a series of hidden installations that Iran has constructed, in addition to its publicly acknowledged ones, for what is considered to be a military program. Iran insists that its program is purely peaceful and that it has a right under the nonproliferation treaty to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. But it has regularly lied to the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency about its facilities.

Despite the uncertainties, nuclear experts hailed the tentative agreements. “It’s significant,” David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation, said. “The principle is important.”

Mr. Albright said the amount of low-enriched uranium to be shipped out of Iran was also significant. Iran’s stockpile has worried some arms controllers, who fear that Tehran may drop out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and further enrich the material into fuel for a bomb.

The new accord would end that prospect — at least for the exported uranium.

Mr. Albright cautioned that the deal would become a real solution only if Iran expanded the accord to cover all the uranium that it wanted enriched. “Iran’s made a concession,” he said. “But it has little meaning for the long term unless Iran continues to send out” its uranium for enrichment.


Steven Erlanger reported from Geneva, and Mark Landler from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Helene Cooper from Washington, Sharon Otterman and William J. Broad from New York, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.