Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated on Wednesday his country's "red lines" in negotiations with world powers over its controversial nuclear programme due to resume next week in Vienna. Khamenei's intervention came as EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton's spokesman announced that she and US Secretary of State John Kerry would meet in the Austrian capital with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Ashton will first hold bilateral talks next Tuesday with Zarif, as is customary ahead of each round of nuclear negotiations, and a three-way meeting is to be held the next day, spokesman Michael Mann said. Iran and the P5+1 group of nations (China, the United States, France, Britain, Russia and Germany) have set a November 24 deadline to strike a deal guaranteeing that Tehran's nuclear programme is used for exclusively peaceful means. But talks have stalled over the issue of Iran's future capacity for uranium enrichment and the timetable for the lifting of international sanctions against Tehran. "I think that before the end of next week we will have bilateral and multilateral negotiations in Vienna," foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said on Wednesday.
"The exact date will be given later," she added.
The talks were confirmed by Austria's Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurtz, who posted on Twitter that Vienna would next week host an "important discussion between USA, EU & Iran". An infographic published on Khamenei's official website outlined 11 points to be observed by negotiators before Iran will sign an accord. One of the stipulations includes "the absolute need for Iran's uranium enrichment capacity to be 190,000 SWU (Separate Work Units)" - close to 20 times its current processing ability. Iranian officials say this is needed to produce fuel for its Bushehr reactor, which is being provided by Russia until 2021. The US and other Western states, however, want Iran to decrease its enrichment capability.
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