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Nuclear Talks Resume With Offer to Iranians

Updated February 26, 2013, 7:16 p.m. ET Comments (9)

By LAURENCE NORMAN

ALMATY, Kazakhstan—The first day of talks on Iran's nuclear program adjourned Tuesday evening after a 2½-hour session in which international powers presented a new proposal intended to persuade Tehran to scale back its nuclear activities.

The talks, convening Tuesday for the first time since June, were set to resume again on Wednesday when Iranian negotiators were expected to respond to the offer.

The revised offer to Tehran addressed "concerns on the exclusive peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program" but was also "responsive to Iranian ideas," said Michael Mann, spokesman for the EU's foreign-policy chief, Catherine Ashton. He didn't give details.

Iranian negotiators were prepared to respond with proposals based on ideas Tehran put forward at the last talks in Moscow, an Iranian official said. Those talks ended without progress.

U.S. officials said they hoped the new offer from representatives of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany, a group known as the P5+1, would lead to a stepped-up pace of talks and a follow-up expert-level meeting set for before the Iranian new year in mid-March. Talks were set to conclude Wednesday.

The Iranians broached issues about the P5+1 offer on Tuesday in bilateral talks with Russia, Britain and Germany, a Western diplomat said.

While Iran regularly holds nuclear talks with the European Union, Russia and China, Tuesday was the first time in nearly three years it has held bilateral discussions with Britain at nuclear talks. U.K.-Iranian relations soured after Iranians attacked and overran the British Embassy in Tehran in November 2011.
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"Iran needs to understand that there is an urgent need to make concrete and tangible progress in the talks," Mr. Mann said. "I would say that from our perspective, the onus is very much on the Iranians," he said.

Mr. Mann called Tuesday's talks "useful." Discussions were set to continue Wednesday morning, when "we hope to get some more detailed feedback" from Iran, he said.

Many analysts remained skeptical that the negotiations would resolve the nuclear issue after years of on-and-off talks have made little progress.

"Direct dialogue with Iran can be helpful in managing our differences…but it's not going to resolve them," said Karim Sadjadpour, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The U.S.-Iran conflict isn't a simple misunderstanding that can be resolved with direct talks, it's about a fundamental difference of opinion about how the world ought to be."

Washington and Brussels are pressing Iran to commit to a process to end its production of near weapons-grade fuel, officials involved in the diplomacy said. The U.S. and Europeans are willing, in turn, to ease some of the sanctions on Iran that have cut it off from the global financial system and driven down the value of its currency, the rial, officials said.

Write to Laurence Norman at [e-mail]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324338604578327952136263638.html