Vilnius, 06/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - On 6 September, Michael Mann, the spokesman for Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, said that a meeting would take place in the middle of September between Ashton and the Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who has just been put in charge of the nuclear negotiations for his country. On 6 September, Ashton and Zarif had their third telephone conversation over the last few weeks, in which they discussed these negotiations. Arriving at the informal Foreign Affairs Council in Vilnius, the high representative said that “we will be meeting at the beginning of the week at the UN General Assembly” that takes place in New York on 17-30 September, in an attempt to push forward this dossier. She also stated that she would like a date for the next negotiations to be decided at the meeting and added that she hoped that they would have the opportunity to set out the date and that the Western powers did have a number of dates available to propose. She pointed out that the E3+3 is ready to move forward.
Ashton affirmed that she wanted to discuss the new negotiating team with Zarif and the question of who would be Iran's interlocutor with the E3+3. According to the high representative, the minister explained that he would play a significant role in relations between the EU and Iran.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and his British counterpart, William Hague, will also meet Zarif in New York.
Zarif asserted that the wanted to remove any concerns over his country's programme. According to the Mehr agency he said that “placating any international concerns there are is in our interest because nuclear weapons are not part of the Islamic Republic's policy. It is therefore in our interest to remove any ambiguity regarding our country's nuclear programme”. (CG/transl.fl)