Iran uranium enrichment will not be decided in interim deal, Kerry says

US secretary of state John Kerry said today that the issue of whether Iran will ultimately be allowed to enrich uranium will not be decided in an interim deal under discussion between major world powers and Iranian officials in Geneva.

Big powers resumed talks today on a preliminary deal to curb Iran’s nuclear programme with Russia and Britain confident a breakthrough could be clinched and Iran spelling out “red lines” but saying it wanted friendly ties with all nations.

Mr Kerry told reporters: “Whatever a country decides or doesn’t decide to do, or is allowed to do under the rules, depends on a negotiation”.

“We are at the initial stage of determining whether or not there is a first step that could be taken, and that certainly will not be resolved in any first step, I can assure you,” he added.

A senior US administration official said today it would be “very hard”, though still possible, to reach an initial nuclear deal with Iran in talks in Geneva this week. “I think we can (get a deal), whether we will, we will have to see because it is hard. It is very hard,” the official told reporters .

Russian president Vladimir Putin said today that he was hopeful of a positive outcome .

Keen to end a long standoff and head off the risk of a wider Middle East war, the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany came close to winning concessions from Tehran on its nuclear activity in return for some sanctions relief at negotiations in Geneva earlier this month.

Policymakers from the six nations have since said an interim accord on confidence-building steps could finally be within reach, despite warnings from diplomats that differences persist and could still foil an agreement.

British foreign secretary William Hague said the remaining gaps were narrow. "It is the best chance for a long time to make progress on one of the gravest problems in foreign policy," he told a news conference during a visit to Istanbul.

Chinese deputy foreign minister Li Baodong, head of China's delegation in Geneva, told Reuters: "Things are on track."

Western governments suspect Iran has enriched uranium with the covert aim of developing the means to fuel nuclear weapons, which Tehran denies. Refined uranium is used to run nuclear power stations - Iran’s stated goal - but cam also constitute the core of a nuclear bomb, if enriched to a high degree.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech as Western negotiators gathered in the Swiss city that the Islamic Republic would not step back from its nuclear rights and he had set "red lines" for his envoys in Geneva.

But he added, according to his official website: “We want to have friendly relations with all nations and peoples. The Islamic system isn’t even hostile to the nation of America, although with regards to Iran and the Islamic system, the American government is arrogant, malicious and vindictive.”

Mr Khamenei also criticised France, which spoke out against a draft deal floated at the November 7th to 9th round, for “succumbing to the United States” and “kneeling before the Israeli regime”. France said the comments were unacceptable.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Russia today to appeal for tougher terms in any accord with Iran after failing to convince the United States that the world powers are pursuing a bad deal.

Israel, assumed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, sees a nuclear-armed Iran as a mortal threat and wants its arch-enemy’s uranium enrichment capabilities dismantled and its enriched uranium stockpile removed.

Israel worries that the interim deal being discussed in Geneva would buy Iran time to pursue nuclear weapons because it would not scrap its nuclear fuel-making infrastructure, while the six powers see it as placing a ceiling on Iran’s nuclear activity as a stepping stone towards a broad final settlement.

White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes sought to allay Israeli misgivings, saying negotiators needed the six months an interim solution would provide to strike an comprehensive agreement.

“What we have said to the Israelis is that we have this tactical difference with you on pursuing this first step, but we share the end goal, and that’s the point of these whole negotiations, which is to prevent Iran getting nuclear weapons,” he told CNN.

The last meeting stumbled over Iran’s insistence that its “right” to enrich uranium be explicitly recognised and over its building of a heavy-water reactor near Arak that could yield plutonium, an alternative bomb fuel, once operational.

Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has since suggested a way around the first sticking point, saying Tehran has the right to refine uranium but is not now insisting others recognise that right.

A UN inspector report last week showed Iran had stopped expanding enrichment and had not added major new components at Arak since August, when moderate Hassan Rouhani replaced hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president.

Reuters