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Iran at talks: No scrapping any nuclear facility

The statement by Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi suggest tough talks ahead between Iran and world powers.

Iran said on Tuesday it would not scrap any of its nuclear facilities, drawing a red line in negotiations with six world powers seeking deep cutbacks in Tehran’s atomic programme in exchange for an end to crippling economic sanctions.

The statement by Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi suggested tough talks ahead, constituting a rejection of a central demand by the six countries.

The talks are designed to build on a first-step deal that came into effect last month and commits Iran to initial curbs on its nuclear programme in return for some easing of sanctions.

Iran insists it is not interested in producing nuclear weapons but the six powers want Tehran to back its words with concessions. They seek an agreement that will leave Iran with little capacity to quickly ramp up its nuclear programme into weapons-making mode with enriched uranium or plutonium, which can used for the fissile core of a missile.

For that, they say Iran needs to dismantle or store most of its 20,000 uranium enriching centrifuges, including some of those not yet working. They also demand that an Iranian reactor now being built be either scrapped or converted from a heavy-water setup to a light-water facility that makes less plutonium.

Iran is desperate to shed nearly a decade of increasingly strict sanctions on its oil industry and its financial sector but is fiercely opposed to any major scaling back of its nuclear infrastructure.

“Dismantling (the) nuclear programme is not on the agenda,” Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters in Vienna.

The talks are formally led by Catherine Ashton, the EU’s top foreign policy official, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany are also at the table.

Ashton spokesman Michael Mann warned of the “intensive and difficult work lying ahead of us.”

However, Abbas Araghchi said the talks got off to a ‘‘very good beginning.” He said even if they end later this week with nothing more than a future agenda ‘‘we’ve accomplished a lot.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man with the final say on all matters of state in the Islamic Republic, had declared that the talks “will not lead anywhere” - while also reiterating that he did not oppose the delicate diplomacy.

Hours later a senior US administration official also tamped down expectations, telling reporters in the Austrian capital that it will be a “complicated, difficult and lengthy process” and “probably as likely that we won’t get an agreement as it is that we will”.

It is the first round of high-level negotiations since a November 24 interim deal that, halting a decade-long slide towards outright conflict, has seen Tehran curb some nuclear activities for six months in return for limited relief from sanctions to allow time for a long-term agreement to be hammered out.

The stakes are huge. If successful, the negotiations could help defuse many years of hostility between Iran - an energy-exporting giant - and the West, ease the danger of a new war in the Middle East, transform power relationships in the region and open up vast new possibilities for Western businesses.

The talks - expected to last two or three days - began on Tuesday morning at the United Nations complex in Vienna. The venue was to shift later to a luxury city centre hotel where the chief negotiators were staying.

A spokesman for Catherine Ashton said bilateral meetings between delegations were under way.

A spokesman for Ashton confirmed that the current talks aimed only to create “a framework for future negotiations”.

Despite his public scepticism about chances for a lasting accord with the West, Khamenei made clear Tehran was committed to continuing the negotiations between Iran and Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

“What our officials started will continue. We will not renege. I have no opposition,” he told a crowd in the northern city of Tabriz on Monday to chants of “Death to America” - a standard reflexive refrain since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Western diplomats said it was difficult to predict the chances of getting a final agreement with Tehran over the next six months that would be acceptable to all sides. “The one thing we know is they want the sanctions to go away, which will work in our favour,” a Western diplomat said.

During a decade of fitful dialogue with world powers, Iran has rejected allegations by Western countries that it is seeking a nuclear weapons capability. It says it is enriching uranium only for electricity generation and medical purposes.

Tehran has defied UN Security Council demands that it halt enrichment and other proliferation-sensitive activities, leading to a crippling web of US, EU and UN sanctions that has severely damaged the OPEC country’s economy.

Khamenei’s approval of serious negotiations with the six powers despite the scepticism he shares with hard-line conservative supporters, diplomats and analysts say, is driven by Iran’s worsening economic conditions, analysts say.