The presidents of Iran and Russia have expressed hope for a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis on the eve of key talks aiming to break the deadlock, media reported yesterday.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev held their first telephone talks late on Friday, a day before the talks yesterday in Geneva, media reported.
“In the Geneva negotiations ... we can examine ways to make decisions in different fields and help resolve the existing issues,” the Web site of Iranian state television quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
CLARIFICATION
The Kremlin quoted Medvedev as urging Iran “to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] to clarify questions remaining about the Iranian nuclear program.”
“The Russian president reiterated his firm position on resolving the situation surrounding Iran’s nuclear program only by political and diplomatic means,” it said.
Russia is one of the six world powers that last month gave Iran a proposal offering it full negotiations on a range of incentives if it suspends sensitive uranium enrichment operations.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was to hold talks on the package with Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Geneva yesterday, in a meeting that for the first time will also be attended by a US envoy.
Iran’s press yesterday hailed the presence of a US diplomat at the talks, calling on Tehran’s arch foe to recognize its atomic rights.
In a major shift by Washington, US Under-secretary of State William Burns was to attend yesterday’s talks.
GLEEFUL HARDLINERS
Hardline newspapers such as Jomhouri Eslami and Kayhan, the voices of Iran’s clerical establishment, expressed glee over the US presence at the talks and interpreted it as a sign of US weakness.
“Burns’ presence at the Geneva talks emanates from the needs of the foreign policy of the United States and also shows the existence of differences among the world powers,” said Kayhan, whose editor-in-chief is appointed by the supreme leader.
For Jomhouri Eslami, the shift showed that the US “is no longer a superpower and its power is fading. Their weakness showed from the beginning of the Islamic Revolution and this has intensified.”
DIPLOMATIC PRESENCE
Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign minister said on Friday that his country was open to discussing the establishment by the US of its first diplomatic presence in Tehran since relations were severed nearly three decades ago.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki welcomed as a “positive step” the administration’s decision to send a senior US official to participate in international talks with Iran this weekend, and said he expected the talks to make progress.
Speaking in Ankara, Turkey, Mottaki said there had been increased demand from Iranians and Americans for better bilateral social and business relations.
Although there has been no official confirmation, European and US officials have said the US was considering establishing a diplomatic presence in Iran for the first time since relations were ended during the 444-day occupation of the US embassy in Tehran, which started on Nov. 4, 1979.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
In the East Room of the White House on a particularly frigid Saturday afternoon, US President Joe Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 of the most famous names in politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy and science. Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton aroused a standing ovation from the crowd as she received her medal. Clinton was accompanied to the event by her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and grandchildren. Democratic philanthropist George Soros and actor-director Denzel Washington were also awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor in a White House
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
RSS