A defiant Iran said Friday its uranium enrichment drive was not up for debate, as Western sources described talks between the Islamic republic and world powers in Istanbul as "inconclusive." Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili met in the Turkish city with representatives from the so-called P5+1 group of Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany, led by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
The gathering, scheduled to continue Saturday, was the second round of talks between Iran and the powers after negotiations resumed last month in Geneva, breaking a 14-month hiatus in diplomatic efforts to dispel concerns that Tehran is developing an atomic bomb.
"We will absolutely not allow the talks to go into the issue of our basic rights like the issue of suspending enrichment," Abolfazl Zohrevand, an aide to Jalili, said in the yard of an Istanbul mosque where the Iranians went for Friday prayers. He insisted however the talks were held in a "positive" climate.
"We will focus on co-operation... The talks have been positive because both sides have come to take positive steps." But Western officials reported little progress, saying that both sides kept their positions. "They talked a lot but the positions remain the same... It would be fair to say that that the bilateral (meeting) was inconclusive," a diplomat, who requested anonymity, said after Ashton and Jalili met for an hour and a half.
The Iranians, he said, insisted on two pre-conditions to engage in talks on a nuclear fuel swap proposal, aimed at easing suspicions over Tehran's nuclear activities. They are demanding recognition of their right to enrich uranium and the lifting of international sanctions, he said, adding that the powers rejected any preconditions in the talks.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful, but has refused to suspend uranium enrichment, the sensitive process which can be used to make nuclear fuel or, in highly extended form, the fissile core of an atomic bomb. Its defiance has prompted four sets of UN sanctions, coupled by a series of sanctions imposed unilaterally by the United States and the EU.
The Western official said the nuclear fuel swap proposal "was not specifically put on the table but was discussed in a very nuanced way" Friday. The powers are looking for a deal on an updated version of the proposal, first discussed in 2009, "as a starting point to build confidence and get the process done," he said. Under the original draft, Iran would have received fuel for a medical research reactor in Tehran from France and Russia in return for shipping out most of its stockpiles of low-enriched uranium.