‘Common issues focus of Istanbul talks’

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Saeed Jalili insists that the upcoming comprehensive talks between Iran and the P5+1 in Istanbul will focus on “common concerns.”

Iran’s top negotiator referred to “existing debates and concerns such as nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and cooperation in making peaceful nuclear energy accessible to other nations” as potential issues of common concerns to the negotiating parties.

The Iranian chief negotiator added that the Istanbul summit can succeed “if it follows up on discussions about cooperating on common points,” based on agreement reached during the Tuesday multifaceted talks, IRNA reported.

Jalili and EU Foreign Affairs chief Catherine Ashton opened the comprehensive talks between Iran and the P5+1 member states – Britain, China, France, Russia and the US plus Germany – in Geneva on Monday after Western powers expressed willingness to return to the negotiating table.

The two sides ended the third round of the multifaceted talks in Geneva on Tuesday and agreed to hold the next round of talks in the Turkish city of Istanbul late January.

Jalili also reiterated that the rights of the Iranian nation are non-negotiable and that talks cannot continue “under the shadow of pressure.”

The Iranian official also stated that during the recent talks “we communicated our views and said that Europe is paying heavily for some of the wrong policies that they have adopted, based on their miscalculations.”

Meanwhile, Monday’s talks focused on last week’s terrorist attacks in the Iranian capital of Tehran targeting two Iranian nuclear scientists.

Jalili lashed out at the West’s silence over the attacks, which left one Iranian scientist dead and another injured.

On November 29 unknown terrorists assassinated Iranian academic Majid Shahriari by a bomb attached to his car as he was on his way to Shahid Beheshti University, where he was a professor.

Shahriari’s wife, who was accompanying him at the time of the attack, narrowly escaped death with injuries.

In a similar attack on another lecturer the same day, the terrorists attached a bomb to the vehicle of Professor Fereydoun Abbasi, another academic with the University of Shahid Beheshti. Abbasi and his wife, who was riding with him in the car, managed to escape the incident with minor injuries, as he was reportedly alarmed when the bomb was attached to his automobile.

AO/MB/HRF

via PressTV – ‘Common issues focus of Istanbul talks’.