Region | Iran
Limited Geneva deal wins nation respite
Obama says Islamic republic must honour its new pledges quickly to earn back trust.
- Reuters
- Published: 18:15 October 2, 2009
- Image Credit: EPA
- European Union foreign policy Chief Javier Solana with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili prior to the opening of the talks near Geneva on Iran's disputed nuclear programme on, Thursday.
Vienna: Iran struck preliminary deals with world powers on Thursday to start easing a protracted standoff over suspicions it secretly seeks nuclear weapons, winning itself a reprieve from tougher sanctions in the near future.
Both sides spoke of productive talks in Geneva, which included the highest-level US-Iranian exchange in 30 years. But US President Barack Obama said Iran had to carry out new pledges quickly to relieve pressure on it and earn back trust.
The Geneva meeting yielded deals for Iran to give UN inspectors access soon to a second uranium enrichment site hidden for three years, export low-enriched uranium to Europe for processing and return to Iran for use in medical isotopes, and to have follow-up talks before the end of October.
Iran's new gestures of nuclear transparency hushed Western calls for harsher sanctions that intensified last week when Tehran revealed its second enrichment site to the International Atomic Energy Agency after, diplomats said, learning that the site had been detected by Western intelligence services.
But to keep the threat of more punishment at bay, Iran will have to implement the deals without the sort of delays, evasions and obfuscations which Western officials say have confounded efforts in the past.
Iran in turn has accused Western powers of bullying and double standards in pushing to curtail its nuclear programme.
Obama stressed the US would support a peaceful Iranian nuclear energy programme. But he said world powers would not wait much longer for Tehran to prove it had no military dimensions.
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