Result of Iran-P5+1 talks, positive

A senior Iranian official has hailed the result of the last round of talks between Tehran and the group of six major world powers as positive.

“It seems that the result of the meeting has been positive,” Ali Baqeri, the undersecretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), said on Thursday.

“The new proposal of the P5+1 group (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States plus Germany) is closer to some of our views,” Baqeri added.

Iran and the P5+1 wrapped up their latest round of negotiations in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on February 27. Both sides have held several meetings over the issue of Tehran’s nuclear energy program.

Iran and the P5+1 agreed to convene in Almaty again on April 5-6 for the next round of negotiations after holding “expert-level” talks in the Turkish city of Istanbul on March 17-18.

Baqeri said the details of the proposal should be further discussed at the Istanbul expert-level meeting.

The United States, Israel, and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Over the false allegation, Washington and the European Union have imposed several rounds of illegal unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Iran refutes the allegation and argues that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it is entitled to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

In a meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the sidelines of the Fifth United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) Global Forum in Vienna on Wednesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said, “We are ready to take measures to remove the nuclear concerns [over] our country via mutually agreed international means (between Iran and the West); however, the recognition of our [nuclear] rights by the opposite side will be paramount.”