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Iran urges West to seize chance of talks

“Time is moving against the negotiating side. It should use the chance at the earliest,” Ali-Asghar Soltaniyeh said on Tuesday, referring to comprehensive talks which will be held between Iran and the P5+1 — Russia, China, France, Britain and America plus Germany — in Istanbul, Turkey, on January 21 and 22.

IRI Ambassador to IAEA pointed out that the country successfully enriched uranium to the level of 20 percent merely for medical and treatment purposes following the West’s lack of cooperation.

“After the installation of the first fuel rods, produced by Iran, in the core of the Tehran research reactor, Iran’s Parliament (Majlis) will probably never allow the government to negotiate dispatching uranium to Turkey or other countries,” Soltaniyeh said.

“In this case, Iran will continue to produce nuclear fuel,” he noted.

The Iranian diplomat described as a strategic mistake any move towards nuclear weapons which would inflict damage on national security and interests.

However, he reiterated that Iran has an inalienable right to use nuclear energy and uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes under the IAEA surveillance.

“We will never give up our undeniable nuclear rights which are in accordance with the IAEA and will never compromise on the issue at all,” he said.

Soltaniyeh emphasized that nuclear weapons have no room in Iran’s doctrine and expressed the Islamic Republic’s opposition to weapons of mass destruction in all their varieties.

“Nuclear weapons are religiously forbidden in the Islamic Republic,” he went on to say.

The Iranian envoy expressed the country’s readiness to hold talks with negotiating sides on regional and global developments, saying, “We are ready to negotiate with the five nuclear powers on regional and international issues without any preconditions, based on mutual respect and on equal footings.”

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