Ashton to meet Irans Zarif in New York

EU High Representative Catherine Ashton Friday spoke to the Foreign Minister of Iran Javad Zarif for the third time in the last few weeks and said she expects to meet him at the UN General Assembly later this month."Today specifically I was responding to the news that the foreign ministry will take responsibility for the talks (on the nuclear issue).I told him that I stand ready with my colleagues to get the talks moving," Ashton told reporters ahead of an EU foreign ministers meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, this afternoon." We have dates that are available and he and I agreed to meet early in the week of the UN General Assembly in order to try and move this forward. It remains an extremely important part of my agenda," she stressed."I said to the Foreign Minister that I was encouraged to hear that we know where the interlocutor will be from. I don't yet know who the interlocutor will be. And that's an issue that I want to talk with the Foreign Minister about. He and I already established a rapport," said the EU foreign policy chief." He will play an important role in the relationship between the EU and Iran. But it remains to be seen quite how the decisions are taken about exactly what the formulation will be for the talks itself. I said to him that we are ready to come very quickly to discussions " she said. "We've got some good proposals on the table. We are always willing to listen to good proposals from Iran. We really want to move now quickly to resolve this," she noted.Ashton said she also discussed Syria with Zarif, who asked to speak to her not long after the day of the chemical weapons attack in Damascus on 21 August."Of course they take a different view about where all this came from but I don't believe they dispute the fact of the attack. I've made the point to him that I made to everyone: we have to get a political process that is going to solve this," she added.