Brussels, 17/09/2012 (Agence Europe) - High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton, acting in the name of the E3+3 (Germany, France, UK, USA, China and Russia), will meet the chief negotiator on the Iranian nuclear programme, Saeed Jalili, in Istanbul on Tuesday evening 18 September. This meeting “is not a formal negotiating round”, Ashton's spokesperson, Maja Kocijancic, said. However, “the meeting will be an opportunity to stress once again to Iran the need of an urgent and meaningful confidence building step and to show more flexibility with the proposals the E3+3 tabled in Baghdad”, she added.
The meeting, which is the first since the meeting in Moscow in June, is in line with the understandings reached at the Moscow meeting. It follows the technical experts meeting, the meeting of the deputy negotiators, Helga Schmid and Ali Baheri, on 24 July, and the Ashton-Jalili phone call on 2 August. During this telephone exchange, they had agreed to speak again or meet at the end of August - a dialogue which was postponed.
The E3+3 seeks assurances from Tehran that the development of Iran's nuclear programme is only for civil - and not military - purposes. Kocijancic said that they are following a twin track approach. There is a negotiations route, to remove doubts that might exist on the nuclear programme, which is something led by the high representative in the name of the E3+3 and which is making progress, Kocijancic added. (CG/transl.fl)