BAGHDAD — Six world powers laid out detailed proposals Wednesday for Iran to ease the urgency of international concerns about its nuclear program, including a freeze on its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent purity, close to bombgrade, in return for modest benefits.
The hope is that Iran, through its negotiator, Saeed Jalili, will agree to the offer as an agenda for negotiations that can convince the world that its nuclear program is purely civilian, as Iran insists.
But the six - Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia andthe United States - rejected Iranian calls for an immediate easing of economic sanctions imposed on Tehran for flouting U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding the suspension of all enrichment. Senior diplomats also said that harsher U.S. and EU sanctions on oil exports and banking transactions to go into effect in July wouldnot be postponed.
The six powers want to buy more time for more comprehensive and detailed negotiations with Iran on the nature of its nuclear program, and want to put a cap on what they view as the most urgent and sensitive issue, which is Iran’s growing stockpile of uraniumenriched to 20 percent. Iran says the uranium is for fuel for medical reactors, but Western diplomats say Tehran already has many times more than it needs, and that moving from 20 percent to bomb-grade purity is a relatively quick and easy process.
The six powers also want Iran to export its current stockpile of 20 percent uranium and, down the road, to dismantle the once-secret Fordo enrichment plant, deep inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom, that is producing it.
In Baghdad, Iran’s choice for a venue, the six powers presented an agenda for near-term action, Western diplomats said, designed to defuse the crisis by removing the 20 percent uranium that most worries Israel and other U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states.Israel has warned that it might attack Iran militarily if Tehran appears to be nearing completion of a nuclear weapon or if it continues to produce highly enriched uranium in protected sites like Fordo that are difficult to bomb.
“There’s a new offer on the table” that addresses our concerns, including the 20 percent enriched uranium, said Michael Mann, spokesman for Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s top foreign-policy official who leads the six-power negotiation team.
The negotiations are a process, Mann said, and “these things can’t be resolved overnight.” If the talks go well here, he said, “we are going to make solid progress.”
In return for early Iran steps to freeze 20 percent enrichment, the six are offering benefits like spare parts for civilian aircraft, much needed in Iran, and help with nuclear safetyat civilian installations, and perhaps a pledge that Iran has the right to a peaceful nuclear program so long as it clears up doubts about its intentions through serious, detailed, technical negotiations with the six powers and through openness with the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The six powers are also offering a new version of a fuelswap program, to take Iran’s 20 percent enriched uranium and return it as processed fuel for medical reactors.
Iran, which insists that its uranium-enrichment program is for peaceful purposes, cautiously welcomed the sixpower proposal. “The ideas fielded to us speak of the fact that the other side would like to make Baghdad a success,” Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in Tehran. “We hope that in a day or two wecan bring good news.”
But Iran’s state news agency was critical of the Western plan. “The problem with the [six power] package is that there is no balance, and there is nothing to get in return for what they give,” it reported. The agency said Iran’s proposal by comparison envisaged a “step-by-step methodology to resolve the dispute” and also was “well-balanced on the give-and-take.”
An easing of sanctions appeared to be the principal sticking point. An unnamed member of the Iranian delegation, who left the meeting early, told reporters that Iran’s five-point proposal, which covered nuclear and nonnuclear issues, was aimed at reaching a “more balanced” agreement with the international powers.
The Iranian side also presented what the Iranian media called a “comprehensive proposal” with five elements, and Iranian journalists said that it included a nuclear plank and one on regional issues.
“Iran proposed a package with five items based on the principles of step-by-step and reciprocity, and we are waiting for the reaction of the [six powers] during meetings this afternoon,” an Iranian official told Agence-France Presse, speaking on condition of anonymity and without elaborating on the offer.
“We said to the other side that we need a comprehensive approach. We need the steps that both sides have to take to be clearly defined and there is no possibility of going back on them,” the Iranian official was quoted as saying. If they lift sanctions, for instance, he said, “they cannot then readopt them two months later under a different pretext.”
Israel’s threats to bomb Iran if it did not halt its nuclear-enrichment program have injected urgency, and tension, into the negotiations, and fears of a broader war in the region that provides much of the world’s oil supplies drove up prices earlier this year.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiar Zebari told reporters that Iraq hopes the talks at the very least would be a step toward reaching a formula agreeable to all sides.
“It is true that Iraq is not party to the negotiations and is but hosting the talks, but it is a priority to us that positive conclusions are reached, because if anything bad were to happen in the future, God forbid, Iraq will be the first to suffer.”
The delegations met for three hours and then broke for lunch and conversation, and were then scheduled to resume discussions Wednesday evening. The talks could last into today, diplomats said.
Information for this article was contributed by Steven Erlanger, Alan Cowell and Thomas Erdbrink of The New York Times; and by Sahar Issa and Roy Gutman of McClatchy Newspapers.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/24/2012