US Team of Negotiators Arrives in Almaty

The United States team of negotiators arrived in Almaty, Kazakhstan, to attend a new round of talks between Iran and the six world powers.

US Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman is heading the US team in the talks.

Yesterday, Iran’s lead negotiator Saeed Jalili arrived in Almaty at the head of a team of negotiators to attend a new round of talks with the six world powers.

The new round of talks between Iran and the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) is slated to begin in Almaty on Tuesday.

Iran’s deputy chief negotiator Ali Baqeri and EU foreign policy deputy chief Helga Schmitt in a phone talk on February 5 agreed that the next round of talks between Tehran and the Group 5+1 be held in Kazakhstan, on February 26.

The last round of talks between Iran and the Group 5+1 was held in Moscow in June.

Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and the western embargos for turning down West’s calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.

Tehran has dismissed West’s demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians’ national resolve to continue the path.

Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.