Europe Gives Iran Breathing Space to Restart Negotiations

With EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana set to meet Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ari Larijani early next week, the bloc's foreign ministers said they wanted to know shortly whether Tehran was willing to talk.

"The deadline is tight. His mandate is tight. We need action. We need a response from Iran," Britain's minister for European affairs, Geoff Hoon, told reporters after the EU talks in southern Finland.

Iran ignored a UN Security Council deadline Thursday to suspend uranium enrichment -- a process used to power a nuclear reactor that could also be used to fuel an atomic bomb, which many fear Tehran is trying to build.

The United States has begun working toward sanctions, but since Iran offered new talks on its nuclear program, veto-holding Security Council members Russia and China appear to have softened their stance in Tehran's favor.

Solana's talks with Larijani are meant to "clarify" sections of a 21-page Iranian response to an incentives deal, which also includes an offer to relaunch talks. Diplomats have suggested the text is, at best, unclear.

EU chief looking for fast solution

The EU's top diplomat said he believes he will soon know if the Iranians are serious, given the delaying tactics and gamesmanship widely employed by their representatives in its negotiations in the past.

"We are going to start in the coming days and I hope it will be very short. We don't need many meetings," Solana told reporters in Lappeenranta, southern Finland, adding that: "There is no deadline."

The EU foreign ministers are due to meet again on Sept. 15 to discuss developments, and Solana said those talks would hinge on Iran's response but also the positions of the Union's international partners.

"This is not a question of the EU only, this is a question of the EU, the US, Russia, China ... there are other partners I have to deal with," he said.

Focus on talks not sanctions

Iran's offer of new talks has left the EU with a delicate diplomatic balancing act. It must keep the door of dialogue with Tehran open without scaring it off by focusing too much on sanctions at the United Nations.

Britain, France and Germany -- who have been at the forefront of EU efforts to get Iran to suspend its enrichment activities in exchange for a package of political and economic incentives -- all warned that time was running out.

"We don't want to slam the door, but we need a signal from Iran that it is ready to move in our direction," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.

When France's minister for European affairs, Catherine Colonna, was asked by reporters how long Iran would have she said: "See you in a few days."

Hoon issued a veiled threat about the use of sanctions.

"It is important to emphasize that the Security Council process must carry on," he said. "We cannot allow the Iranians to continue to spin out this process the way they've done in the past."

EU: No interest in escalation

But Steinmeier suggested that any moves in that direction at the United Nations could be counter-productive.

"The EU and Germany have no interest in seeing an escalation in the coming days and weeks as a result of the consultations at the Security Council," he said.

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said that the EU was determined to "go right to the very end with dialogue, to the very end with its diplomatic efforts."

In Iran, meanwhile, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Saturday that his government would stand firm during any negotiations on its nuclear program, which Tehran maintains it has a right to develop for atomic energy.

"The people will not give in by one iota in their desire to use nuclear energy for peaceful ends and officials have the duty to defend these objectives with firmness during negotiations," he said.