P5+1 experts give Iran further details on ‘revised proposal’: EU official

A senior EU official says the experts of the group of six major world powers have presented Iran with further details about their “revised confidence-building proposal.”

Michael Mann, a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, said that the representatives of the P5+1 (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States plus Germany), provided Iran with the details during Monday’s expert-level talks in the Turkish city of Istanbul.

The two-day meeting, which had been agreed upon by Iran and the P5+1 during their latest round of talks in the Kazakh city of Almaty on February 26-27, began on March 17.

The P5+1 delegation was led by nuclear expert Stephan Klement.

“The meeting also provided an opportunity for both (P5+1) and Iranian experts to explore each other’s positions on a number of technical subjects,” Mann added.

Iran and the P5+1 have both expressed optimism about the future of the talks. On February 28, Reuters quoted an unnamed Western diplomat as saying that, “This was more constructive and more positive than previous meetings because they were really focusing on the proposal on the table.”

In an interview with Austrian broadcaster ORF on March 1, Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi described the latest round of the talks as a “milestone” and a “turning point in the negotiations.”

The United States, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program, with United States and EU using this pretext to impose several rounds of illegal unilateral sanctions against Tehran.

Tehran refutes the allegation, maintaining that as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.