Diplomats to press Iran over nuclear programme

Senior diplomats from Britain and other leading world powers will meet Iran’s chief negotiator today in a fresh attempt to persuade the Tehran regime to come clean about it nuclear programme.

The talks in Geneva with the E3+3 group of France, Germany and the UK, plus the United States, Russia and China, come amid growing impatience among the Western powers at Iran’s continuing intransigence on the nuclear issue.

Gordon Brown joined President Barack Obama and President Nicolas Sarkozy last week at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh in warning Iran that it would face harsh new sanctions unless it can show the world that it is not developing a nuclear weapon.

The three leaders disclosed that the Iranians had been working on a secret underground uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom in what Mr Brown described as a further example of the regime’s “serial deception”.

The Western powers have said they will make an assessment by the end of the year as to whether there is any mileage left in the diplomatic track after years of fruitless negotiations.

They have offered the Iranians access to civil nuclear technology in return for placing their enrichment programme – a key element in developing a bomb – under strict international controls.

Tehran, however, has so far refused even to discuss a “freeze-for-freeze” offer to freeze its enrichment work at current levels in return for an assurance that it would not face any further sanctions while negotiations continue.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was yesterday continuing to voice defiance, saying that it was up to the British, the Americans, and the French to change their approach.

“This meeting is an exceptional opportunity for the US government and the two European countries to change their position in the world and reform their way of interacting with other governments and return to law, justice and respect,” he said.

Diplomats will be looking to see if the Iranian negotiator, Saeed Jalili, maintains the hard-line attitude when he meets with the E3+3 officials and the EU’s Javier Solana behind closed doors in a villa on the outskirts of Geneva.

The Western members of the group have made clear that they will move to extend the existing international sanctions, which are currently targeted mainly at Iran’s nuclear programme, to cover the wider economy, if there is no progress.

China and Russia have in the past been more reluctant to go down the route of sanctions, although President Dmitri Medvedev has recently acknowledged that further measures may be “inevitable”.

While diplomats are keen to maintain the appearance of E3+3 unity, it could mean that the Western powers have to go it alone if they cannot secure the backing of Moscow and Beijing for new measures in the UN Security Council.