Iran ready to discuss other issues than nuclear case with world powers

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araqchi, who is also a ranking member of the country's new team of nuclear negotiators, announced on Sunday that Tehran is ready to confer on different international and regional issues with the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) in addition to its nuclear case. "The framework of negotiations with the G5+1 is comprised of nuclear discussions, but if the members of the G5+1 show they are interested in talks on regional and international issues, we won't have any problem, just the same way that we have never had any problem for talks anytime or anywhere," Araqchi told FNA on Sunday. Iran and the world powers held a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York in September and are due to meet again in Geneva on October 15-16. On April 6, Iran and the six world powers wrapped up two days of intensive negotiations in Almaty, but without making any major breakthrough. Earlier reports said today that several senior officials of the Iranian foreign ministry and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) will accompany Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in the upcoming nuclear talks with the G5+1 in Geneva on Tuesday. Zarif who will preside the Iranian delegation in the negotiations with the world powers is due to be accompanied by two of his deputies Araqchi and Majid Takht Ravanchi, Foreign Ministry's Director-General for the Economic and Specialized International Affairs Hamid Ba'eedinejad, Legal Advisor to the Foreign Ministry Davoud Mohammadnia, and Mohammad Amiri from the AEOI. The Tuesday negotiations will start at the UN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, at 9:30 Geneva time (12:00 Tehran time). "The negotiations will be headed by Zarif and European Union (EU) Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton and will then continue at the level of their deputies; meaning that Seyed Abbas Araqchi will continue the talks accompanied by the Iranian team," an informed source told FNA on Sunday. "In this round of negotiations, the Iranian team which enjoys the necessary level of seriousness and authority is ready for targeted and progressive negotiations and is due to present its new written package of proposals which is based on realistic approaches to the G5+1," the source added. On Thursday, Zarif announced that he and his negotiating team are going to offer a new set of proposals during the upcoming talks with the six world powers in Geneva. “I will put forward a new plan to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear activities during the next round of talks with the Group 5+1,” Zarif said, without elaborating on the contents of the new plan. Washington and its western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and the western embargos for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment. Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path. Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.