Iran cancels nuclear talks meeting

Iran’s deputy nuclear negotiator abruptly cancelled a meeting with his EU counterpart today, saying he was ill.

Javad Vaidi, of Iran, announced the cancellation on the eve of planned talks with Robert Cooper, deputy to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

Mr Vaidi and Mr Cooper were seeking to fix a date and venue for a meeting between Mr Solana and chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, with the Europeans pushing for such talks to take place by the weekend. They were to have met in the Austrian capital, Vienna.

Mr Solana has been engaging Iran in attempts to persuade Tehran to heed UN Security Council demands to suspend uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used to create uranium fuel for power plants and the fissile material of nuclear warheads.

Iran says it seeks only to generate power, but fears that Tehran could opt to develop nuclear weapons once it has perfected its programme have already led to two sets of Security Council sanctions.

For more than two years, the Iranians have spurned offers carried by Mr Solana of material and technical expertise and cooperation on civil atomic power projects in return for freezing enrichment.

He was to submit a report to the Security Council on his efforts.

That, together with findings by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Tehran’s nuclear activities that were forwarded to the council last week, will serve as the basis of deliberations among the five permanent council members on whether to impose a third set of sanctions to penalise the Iranian Republic for its nuclear defiance.

Mr Solana had been seeking an early meeting with Mr Jalili, in part because of pressure from the United States, France and Britain, which are seeking new sanctions.

Russia and China, the two other permanent council members, are reluctant to impose new penalties, saying there is still room for negotiations before such a move.

Mr Solana warned Tehran earlier this month that time to cooperate was running out in the face of the Western push for new UN sanctions. But before Mr Vaidi’s cancellation was announced, European officials had said that the Iranians appeared to be dragging their feet on any new meeting between Mr Solana and Mr Jalili.

One of the officials said it was possible that Mr Vaidi was suffering from a “diplomatic sickness” – prompted by the need to further delay a decision on when such a meeting should occur – but it seemed more likely that he was truly sick.

A true test could occur later this week at a meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation board, which will focus on Iran and which Mr Vaidi is scheduled to attend. His absence at such an important venue would indicate that he really is ill.

That meeting, opening on Thursday, will review the IAEA report submitted to the Security Council last week and its findings that – while Tehran appeared to be cooperating more than ever with an agency investigation of past suspicious activities – it was expanding enrichment instead of heeding Council demands to freeze it.