Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Asia and Oceania Seyed Abbas Araqchi lauded Kazakhstan' stance in dealing with the Iran-West nuclear standoff, FNA reported.
"We have previously said that any country which voluntarily implements the US unilateral sanctions against Iran would no longer be considered as an impartial state, and Kazakhstan is among those countries which has not enforced the US unilateral sanctions," Araqchi said on Wednesday.
Araqchi made the remarks while commenting on the reason behind choosing Kazakhstan as the host of the upcoming talks between Iran and Group 5+1 ( the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China plus Germany) which is to be held on February 26.
"There is a difference between sanctions imposed on Iran by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and those which were unilaterally imposed on the country by the US," Araqchi told reporters.
"All nations are bound to implement the UNSC's sanctions while US forces other nations to enforce its unilateral sanctions against other countries," the diplomat added.
Deputy chief negotiators of Iran and the G5+1 agreed on the date and venue of the next round of talks between Iran and the six world powers.
Iran's deputy chief negotiator Ali Baqeri and EU foreign policy deputy chief Helga Schmitt in a phone talk on Tuesday agreed that the next round of talks between Tehran and the Group 5+1 be held in Kazakhstan on February 26.
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi had announced on Sunday that the new round of talks between Iran and Group 5+1 (Russia, China, France, the UK, and the US plus Germany) will be held in Kazakhstan on February 25.
The last round of talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany was held in Moscow in June.
Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.
Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.
Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path.
Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.