China urges diplomacy on Iran N-issue

After Iran announced the time and venue for talks with the world’s major powers, China has once again called for dialogue to solve Tehran’s nuclear issue.

“On the Iranian nuclear issue, the parties concerned should bear in mind the larger picture and long-term interests. They should increase diplomatic efforts and remain patient,” Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said on Wednesday.

On October 14, EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton expressed the West’s readiness to return to negotiations and proposed three-day talks with Iran in mid-November in the Austrian capital of Vienna.

Dialogue between Iran and the P5+1 — Britain, China, France, Russia, and the US plus Germany — has been stalled since October 1, 2009, when the two sides met in Geneva.

Iran on Tuesday announced that the multifaceted talks with the P5+1 would restart on December 6 in Switzerland.

Yang called on all the parties involved to adopt a flexible, pragmatic and proactive approach to achieve a “comprehensive, long-term and appropriate solution,” Xinhua reported.

Iran has stressed that it would negotiate the issue of a nuclear fuel swap with the Vienna group — France, Russia, the US, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — within the framework of the Tehran declaration, and its talks with the P5+1 would not include the nuclear issue.

Iran signed a declaration with Turkey and Brazil on May 17 based on which it agreed to exchange 1,200 kg of its low-enriched uranium on Turkish soil with nuclear fuel.

The US and its allies snubbed the declaration and used their influence on the UN Security Council to press for fresh sanctions against Iran over the country’s nuclear program which they claim is aimed at developing nuclear weapons.

Iranian officials have repeatedly refuted such accusations, arguing that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA, Tehran has the right to use peaceful nuclear technology.