resume next week, the EU announced Tuesday. The office of Catharine Ashton, the foreign policy chief of the European Union, said the talks would be held Monday and Tuesday, December 6 and 7, in Geneva.
It said Iran had just communicated its agreement to such talks. But the announcement described the planned meetings as talks between Ashton and Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, which has always handled the nuclear issue rather than the Foreign Ministry.
The announcement did not make clear whether the Big Six powers—China, Russia, Germany, France, Britain and her United States—would be present as well. Ashton’s office was tasked years ago with trying to find a formula for resuming talks.
The Islamic Republic insisted for months that the talks be expanded to include more countries and that participants first answer three questions posed by Iran. No mention of those pre-conditions was made in Ashton’s announcement. Iran had also stopped talking about those pre-conditions in recent weeks. Most importantly, the Big Six want the talks to focus on Iran’s nuclear program while Iranian officials have repeatedly said they won’t discuss nuclear issues. US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley recently said the United States considered that to be mere blather, that Iran had said similar things before previous meetings and that the meetings were still focused on the nuclear issue. The last talks between Iran and the Big Six were held October 1, 2009. They came to nothing. Few expect next week’s talks to produce much either.
