Top diplomats from several world powers were poised Monday to restart talks with Iran about its contentious nuclear programme with both sides aiming at gradual confidence-building rather than a breakthrough at the Geneva meeting, DPA reported.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeid Jalili said hours before the meeting on the weekend that Iran's right to seek nuclear technology was "non-negotiable."
His counterpart in the Swiss city was EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, negotiating on behalf of senior diplomatic delegates from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.
These six world powers are worried that Iran could use its uranium enrichment plants to make fuel for warheads rather than reactors. But four rounds of UN sanctions have not been able to pressure Tehran's leaders to halt enrichment.
Officials on both sides of the table said before the two-day talks that one way to break the impasse could be to revive a confidence-building scheme in which Iran would ship enriched uranium out of the country, thus signalling that it cannot be used for military means.
The plan was hatched in the previous multilateral round in October 2009 in Geneva, but has faltered amid Iran's internal political bickering, expansion of its nuclear programme, and new international sanctions targeting the country.
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