U.S., allies see window to end Iran nuke fears
UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. and its international partners emerged from a meeting with Iran declaring that a “window of opportunity has opened” to peacefully settle their nuclear standoff. But diplomats asked Tehran to come back with a detailed plan of action to reassure the world it is not trying to build an atomic bomb.
The upbeat, if guarded, tone after the meeting of Iran, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany was seen as a significant step forward after months of stalled talks. It was capped by an unexpected one-on-one meeting between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who shook hands and at one point sat side-by-side in the group talks Thursday.
It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in six years.
In another sign of building momentum, both sides agreed to fast-track negotiations and hold a substantive round of talks Oct. 15-16 in Geneva. Iran, hoping to get relief from punishing international sanctions as fast as possible, said it hoped a resolution could be reached within a year.
“We agreed to jump-start the process so that we could move forward with a view to agreeing first on the parameters of the end game ... and move toward finalizing it hopefully within a year's time,” Zarif said after the talks. “I thought I was too ambitious, bordering on naiveté. But I saw that some of my colleagues were even more ambitious and wanted to do it faster.”
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton also said the parties had agreed to “go forward with an ambitious time frame.”
Kerry said he was struck by the “very different tone” from Iran. But along with his European colleagues, he stressed that a single meeting was not enough to assuage international concerns that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program.
“Needless to say, one meeting and a change in tone, that was welcome, does not answer those questions,” Kerry told reporters. “All of us were pleased that the foreign minister came today and that he did put some possibilities on the table.”
