TEHRAN: Iran said on Sunday it has informed Ankara that Tehran is ready to hold talks in Turkey with the six world powers over its controversial nuclear program, turning to a country seen as an ally.
European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, spearheading the negotiations with Iran for the world powers, last month proposed to hold the talks in Vienna where the UN nuclear watchdog is based starting November 15.
"In the last two or three days, we informed our Turkish friends that we agree to hold negotiations in Turkey," Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters, asked for a venue.
Iranian media, meanwhile, reported that Karim Bagheri, the deputy of Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, had visited Turkey on Thursday.
Jalili informed Ashton in October that his country was prepared to resume nuclear talks after November 10 at a time and place agreed by both sides, according to the state news agency IRNA.
On Sunday, an Iranian conservative newspaper, Vatan Emrouz, without quoting a source, reported that the negotiations would be held by the end of November in Turkey.
The nuclear talks between Iran and the six world powers — Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the United States — have been deadlocked since October 2009 when the two sides met in Geneva.
The world powers led by the United States suspect that Iran is masking a weapons drive under the guise of a civilian nuclear program, a charge Tehran strongly denies.
Mottaki said the Islamic republic was "very optimistic" about the next round of talks.
"I hope we will reach an agreement soon over the date and the contents," he said. "We are very optimistic the discussions will start as soon as possible, as the overall approach of Iran is positive and constructive."
Mottaki said last Wednesday that any nuclear fuel swap must be based on an agreement it has signed with Brazil and neighboring Turkey, a trading partner which has opposed sanctions against Tehran.
In May, Brazil and Turkey brokered a modified agreement on a fuel exchange but the United States rejected it, arguing the deal failed to take into account additional uranium enriched since last year.
Iran has always insisted that the talks be held on its package of proposals given to the world powers before the October 2009 round of talks. That package talks of overall global nuclear disarmament.
But world powers insist the talks focus on Iran’s nuclear program.
The deadlock with world powers has already led to fresh UN and EU sanctions against Iran, which were followed by several other unilateral punitive measures by other nations, including the United States.
Tehran has brushed off these sanctions as having no impact, although the measures ban investments in oil, gas and petrochemicals while also targeting banks, insurance, financial transactions and shipping.
French daily Le Monde reported last week that the United States was mulling new proposals in the upcoming negotiations.
It said the new offer to Iran would include the transfer of 2,000 kilograms of Tehran’s low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia for the Islamic republic’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, which has been built by Moscow.
The US proposal also calls for the transfer of another 1,200 kilogrammes of Tehran’s LEU to Russia and France, as offered in October 2009 for the Tehran Research Reactor, a facility making medical isotopes, according to Le Monde.
The report adds that Washington plans to propose shifting the 30 kilograms of 20-percent enriched uranium that Tehran currently has produced.
Western media reports say the world powers are considering to offer an updated and "tough" proposal for Iran as it refuses to abandon its uranium enrichment program, the most controversial part of Tehran’s atomic drive.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said last month that Iran’s enriched uranium stocks were now larger than they were when the previous talks broke down in October 2009.
Enriched uranium can be used to power nuclear plants as well as to make the fissile core of an atom bomb.
