Iran FM Zarif outlines ideas to exit nuclear dispute
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif has said that throughout the last two month of nuclear talks he has proposed mechanisms be put in place to address the P5+1's concern of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, while noting that Iran must be allowed to reach its objective of retaining a peaceful nuclear energy program.
Istanbul __ Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Friday he believes Iran and six world powers should accept each other's chief objectives as their own in order to resolve concerns about Iran's nuclear program.
"On the nuclear issue, I believe the problem we have faced in the last ten years is we have both seen the nuclear issue as a zero sum game; we have articulated two seemingly opposing objectives, and each tried to make gains for one objective seemingly at the expense of the others," Zarif told an audience of Middle East nonproliferation specialists convened in Istanbul Friday by the Pugwash conference on nuclear disarmament.
"The result has been that ten years ago, Iran had less than 160 centrifuges spinning, now it has over 18,000," Zarif, speaking in English, said. While ten years ago, "Iran's economy was prospering, now sanctions are hurting the wrong segment of the population. I hope we have come to understand that approach was wrong."
Zarif said he proposed, at meetings with the P5+1 in New York and Geneva the past two months, a new approach: that Iran accepts the West's objective that Iran never have a nuclear weapon, and that the West accept Iran's objective that it have a peaceful nuclear energy program that includes domestic enrichment, with mechanisms to verify it not be used for military purposes.
