AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
VIENNA: The United States, Europe, Russia and China meet here Thursday on Iran's nuclear program with Washington, in a major policy shift, offering to join direct talks with Tehran in return for the suspension of uranium enrichment activities.
The United States said Wednesday it was ready to enter the European-led negotiations to secure guarantees that Tehran will not make atomic weapons.
Diplomats in Washington and Vienna said the move was linked to an effort to get China and Russia to ease categorical opposition to UN sanctions on Iran if negotiations stalled.
A senior US official said: “What they (China and Russia) have agreed is that if Iran does not accept this offer of negotiations or does not negotiate in good faith, we will return to the (UN) Security Council” for sanctions.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made the offer of the first substantive US talks with Iran since diplomatic relations were broken off 26 years ago as she prepared to leave for the Vienna meeting.
“As soon as Iran fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and reprocessing activities, the United States will come to the table with our EU-3 colleagues and meet with Iran's representatives,” she said, referring to Britain, France and Germany.
Later, speaking on CBS television, she said it “really does now confront Iran with a choice: Suspend your enrichment activities and have negotiations, including with the United States at the table.”
“It's a kind of moment of truth for Iran.”
Iranian officials have so far rejected demands to freeze uranium enrichment, a process that makes nuclear power reactor fuel but also atom bomb material.
Several high-ranking officials in Tehran told AFP that the Iranian government would respond to the offer on Thursday.
One lawmaker, parliamentary foreign affairs spokesman Kazem Jalali, was quoted late Wednesday saying the US announcement was “positive” in principle but “inappropriate” since the Islamic Republic has vowed repeatedly never to halt enrichment.
After years of staying on the sidelines as the European powers negotiated with Iran, President George W. Bush said: “My decision today says the United States is going to take a leadership position in solving this issue.”
In Vienna the diplomats will mull a European-drafted proposal offering trade, security and technology incentives to Iran in return for guarantees that it will not develop nuclear weapons.
Iran has offered to resume talks with the EU trio but insists it will not abandon enrichment, although this is a condition for a restart.
A Western diplomat told AFP that Washington would only join multi-party talks “if Russia and China can agree on Thursday to key aspects of the package, including some specific future sanctions if Iran rejects it.”
Non-proliferation analyst Gary Samore from the MacArthur Foundation told AFP that “no one I spoke to is optimistic that these direct talks would lead to an agreement, as Iran seems to be determined to develop industrial-scale uranium enrichment in order to have a weapons option.”
Iranian officials have indicated Tehran may be willing to limit itself to research-scale work using only a small number of centrifuges, the machines that spin uranium gas in order to refine it.
But the US position is that even one centrifuge is too much, otherwise Iran will acquire the “break-out” capability for making nuclear weapons.
Diplomats in Vienna said the United States may however be moving towards a compromise even on this.
Technical possibilities are to let Iran run centrifuges for research, but without nuclear material in them, or to let the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which is based in Vienna determine what level of small-scale enrichment is safe in terms of nuclear non-proliferation.
A diplomat said disagreements about the EU-3 package centered around the timing of a Security Council resolution, if one was needed to require Iran to comply, and which would open the door to sanctions.
According to an early draft text seen by AFP which was being revised, the possible sanctions include an arms embargo on Iran — something Russia, a key arms supplier to Iran, and China, a major consumer of Iranian oil, resist.
On the benefits side, the EU-3 proposal says world powers should help Iran build light water reactors for its civilian nuclear energy program.
Thursday's Vienna meeting is to be at the British ambassador's residence starting about 6:00 pm (1600 GMT), a British spokesman said, adding that this would be preceded by “coordination meetings” among the parties during the afternoon.
