Iran MP rues Aston’s distorting remarks

An Iranian lawmaker says the EU foreign policy chief’s “distorting remarks” deepen the mistrust in negotiations between Iran and the major world powers.

“[Catherine] Ashton and other negotiators failed to achieve their objectives in the Geneva talks, so they made distorting remarks to compensate for their failure in negotiations,” Hossein Naqavi Hosseini said on Sunday.

Iran and the P5+1 — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US plus Germany — wrapped up two days of multifaceted talks in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday.

The comprehensive talks were held between Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Saeed Jalili and Catherine Ashton, who represents the P5+1, after the West expressed willingness to return to the negotiating table.

Both sides have agreed to hold the next round of talks in Istanbul in late January.

In a statement after the negotiations last week, Ashton said “we plan to discuss practical ideas and ways of cooperating towards the resolution of our core concerns about the nuclear issue” in next round of talks.

This came as Iran has made it clear that the negotiations would focus on issues other than the country’s nuclear program.

On Wednesday, Jalili said that the upcoming talks in Istanbul would focus on “common concerns.”

He described the “existing debates and concerns such as nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and cooperation in making peaceful nuclear energy accessible to other nations” as potential issues of common concern to the negotiating parties.

Referring to the recent assassination attests against two Iranian lecturers, Naqavi Hosseini said the move showed the western countries are against the scientific and technological achievements of other states, IRNA reported.

On November 29, unknown terrorists detonated bombs in the vehicles of Dr. Majid Shahriari and Professor Freudian Abbasi, both professors at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, in separate locations.

Shahriari was killed immediately, but Abbasi and his wife sustained minor injuries and were transferred to hospital. The two, however, were released shortly afterwards.

“Iran attended this round of talks as a country possessing [peaceful] nuclear technology and capable of producing required fuel for its power plants,” Naqavi Hosseini said.

The US and its allies accuse Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program, and used their influence on the UN Security Council to press for fresh sanctions against Tehran.

Iranian officials have refuted such allegations, arguing that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Tehran has the right to use peaceful nuclear technology.