Talks ‘effective,’ but nuke program to continue, Iran lawmaker says

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — An Iranian senior lawmaker said the recent nuclear talks between Iran and world powers were effective.

The Sunday report by the semi-official ISNA news agency quotes Alaeddin Boroujerdi as saying that the talks were “considered effective and a step forward.”

Boroujerdi, however, said Iran will never stop its nuclear program.

The West suspects Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has denied the allegation.

“If one day the (Iranian) administration decides to close down Fordo, the parliament will oppose the decision, definitely,” Boroujerdi was quoted as saying. He said Iran will continue reinforcing the plant because of foreign threats. Both the U.S. and Israel have hinted at military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails.

Boroujerdi, who heads a parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, said the talks should be continued.

Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, blamed the West for failure at the weekend talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan. “The talks showed that the West is not honest in its remarks,” he told reporters.

He said Western powers cannot achieve progress “if they do not acknowledge Iran’s natural rights” to enrich uranium.

Velayati is seen a leading candidate for June elections to pick a successor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The comments were the first by top Iranian officials after the talks Friday and Saturday between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.

His comments were the first after talks on Friday and Saturday in Kazakhstan between Iran and permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. The discussions did not lead to any breakthrough in resolving the standoff.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton was less positive about the talks.

“What matters in the end is substance, and … we are still a considerable distance apart,” Ashton told reporters at the end of the talks.

Ashton said negotiators would now consult with their capitals. She made no mention of plans for a new meeting — another sign that the gap dividing the two sides remains substantial. She said she would talk with chief Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili by telephone over further steps.

Jalili spoke of “some distance between the positions of the two sides.” He suggested Iran was ready to discuss meeting a key demand of the other side — cutting back its highest-grade uranium enrichment production and stockpile — but only if the six reciprocated with rewards far greater than they are now willing to give.

While no breakthrough had been expected, the lack of headway in international negotiations that started 10 years ago was certain to increase concerns that diplomacy was ineffective as a tool to stop Iran from moving toward nuclear-weapon making capacity.

At the talks in the Kazakh city of Almaty, the P5+1 (US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany) were asking Tehran to greatly limit its production and stockpiling of uranium enriched to 20 percent, which is just a technical step away from weapons-grade uranium. That would keep Iran’s supply below the amount needed for further processing into a weapon.

But the group views that only as a first step in a process. Iran is operating more than 10,000 centrifuges. While most are enriching below 20 percent, this material, too could be turned into weapons-grade uranium, although with greater effort than is the case for the 20-percent stockpile.

Tehran also is only a few years away from completing a reactor that will produce plutonium, another pathway to nuclear arms.

The UN Security Council has demanded a stop to both that effort and all enrichment in a series of resolutions since 2006. Iran denies any interest in atomic arms, insists its enrichment program serves only peaceful needs, says it has a right to enrich under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and describes UN Security Council demands as illegal.