Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 1
By Rahim Zamanov - Trend:
Head of the Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said on February 1 that Iran will definitely not halt uranium enrichment or shut Fordo site, Iran's Tasnim News Agency reported.
"Uranium enrichment and Ford site are the red lines for Iran in the negotiations. We can negotiate on enriching uranium up to 20 percent for now, but we should be able to enrich uranium whenever we need to do it," Boroujerdi said.
"Majlis has approved that the government cannot accept the halting of uranium enrichment completely," the Iranian MP said.
"Iran's right to enrich uranium is reserved by the NPT, so the base of the sanctions against the country is under question," Boroujerdi said.
"Iran seeks a couple of goals in the negotiations. First, the West should accept and announce Iran's right to enrich uranium. Second, the sanctions imposed on the country should be lifted, and third, the West should construct new power plants for Iran," Boroujerdi said adding that the western technology in constructing power plants is more sophisticated than that of Russia and China.
Iranian IRNA news agency reported on January 30 that Boroujerdi may be added to the country's nuclear negotiating team.
Parliament Spokesman Ali Larijani reportedly requested President Hassan Rouhani to allow Boroujerdi to be added to the negotiators.
IRNA did not provide a response from either Rouhani or Iran's FM Mohammad Javad Zarif on Larijani's preposition, while Mehr News agency reported that Rouhani has accepted Larijani's suggestion.
Elsewhere Larijani said that this is a common practice, which Iran had before, when an MP is involved in nuclear negotiations.
Larijani stressed that there's no need for MPs to be worried about the nuclear talks, and harshly spread it to the society, since the talks are carried out within a concrete framework.
Larijani's remarks came as a response to previous comments by one of the conservative party MPs, who criticized the Geneva nuclear agreement between Iran's nuclear negotiating team and P5+1 group.
Iran and the P5+1 reached a nuclear agreement on Nov. 24. Iran agreed to curb some of its nuclear activities for six months in return for the relief of sanctions. Iran and the P5+1 group agreed to implement the agreement starting from Jan. 20.
Under the agreement, six major powers agreed to give Iran the access to $4.2 billion in revenues blocked overseas if it carries out the deal, which offers sanctions relief in exchange for steps to curb the Iranian nuclear program.
The U.S. and its Western allies suspect Iran of developing a nuclear weapon - something that Iran denies. The Islamic Republic has on numerous occasions stated that it does not seek to develop nuclear weapons, using nuclear energy for medical researches instead.