No breakdown in Iran nuclear talks: U.S. official

TEHRAN,April 8(MNA) – A senior U.S. official said on Saturday that there had been no breakdown in the negotiations between Iran and world powers over the country’s nuclear program, Reuters reported. He also suggested that a willingness by Iranian negotiators to engage in detailed dialogue about the powers’ proposal was the most useful sign in years. Iran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) failed to end the deadlock in a decade-old dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program in talks that ended in Kazakhstan on Saturday. No new talks were scheduled but big power negotiators said the diplomatic process would continue. Some Western countries and Israel accuse Iran of covertly seeking the means to produce nuclear bombs. Iran says its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful and insists that its right to uranium enrichment, as enumerated in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, must be recognized. “There may not have been a breakthrough but there also was not a breakdown,” the U.S. official, who requested anonymity, said. “Our intention is to proceed,” the official added, referring to the powers’ commitment to further diplomatic efforts. European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, the powers’ chief negotiator, said long discussions had not bridged the differences between the two sides. “It became clear that our positions remain far apart,” Ashton, who represents the six major powers in talks with Iran, told a news conference on Saturday. In the Almaty meeting, the powers asked Iran to suspend its most sensitive uranium-enrichment work in return for modest relief from international sanctions, an offer Iran did not accept.