President Obama calls on Iran’s government to take “constructive action” to reassure the world that its nuclear program is peaceful.

By Stephen Kaufman
Staff Writer

Washington — President Obama says the first day of talks between Iran and representatives from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (collectively known as the P5+1) were a “constructive beginning,” but Iran’s government needs to follow up pledges of cooperation with “constructive action.”

Speaking at the White House October 1, Obama said Iran’s delegation to the talks in Geneva, led by Said Jalili, “heard a clear and unified message from the international community [that] … Iran must demonstrate, through concrete steps, that it will live up to its responsibilities with regard to its nuclear program.”

The president called upon Iran to “demonstrate its commitment to transparency” by following through on its agreement to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and allow IAEA inspectors unfettered access to a newly revealed nuclear site near Qom within two weeks.

Iran must build confidence that its nuclear activities will only be used for peaceful purposes, Obama said. Earlier in the day, negotiators in Geneva agreed in principle on a proposal by which Iran’s low-enriched uranium would be transferred to an unspecified third country for fuel fabrication. The president described the proposal as “a confidence-building step” that would help reassure the international community that Iran’s nuclear program will not be used to make weapons.

“As I’ve said before, we support Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear power. Taking the step of transferring its low-enriched uranium to a third country would be a step towards building confidence that Iran’s program is, in fact, peaceful,” he said.

The United States will do its part for “serious and meaningful engagement” with Iran “on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect,” Obama said, but he warned, “Our patience is not unlimited” and “we’re not interested in talking for the sake of talking.”

The United States is “prepared to move towards increased pressure” against Iran if it does not take concrete steps to fulfill its international nuclear obligations, he said.

But if Iran lives up to its obligations, “there is a path towards a better relationship with the United States, increased integration for Iran within the international community and a better future for all Iranians,” Obama said.

“This is not about singling out Iran. This is not about creating double standards. This is about the global nonproliferation regime and Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy, just as all nations have it,” he said.

“But with that right come responsibilities. The burden of meeting these responsibilities lies with the Iranian government, and they are now the ones that need to make that choice,” the president said.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters in Washington October 1 that Iranian representative Jalili had a face-to-face meeting on the margins of the Geneva talks with the U.S. delegation head, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns.

Burns “took that opportunity to amplify our position regarding the nuclear program and reinforce the international community’s concerns about the program,” Kelly said, and he reiterated to Jalili that the United States is not trying to single out Iran or practice “any kind of a double standard.”

Kelly said Burns also raised other issues, including human rights and the fate of Americans being held in Iran.

“We stressed that the detention of these American citizens is an urgent matter that must be resolved as soon as possible,” Kelly said. “This was the first face-to-face meeting that we’ve had with Iranian officials in a long time, so we took advantage of that to press this important issue.”

In Geneva, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who is coordinating the P5+1 talks, said the first day of meetings “represented the start of what we hope will be an intensive process.”

Their significance was enhanced, he said, by “the full participation of the United States of America for the first time.”

The P5+1 repeated its offer to freeze U.N. sanctions that were imposed on Iran in exchange for Iran freezing its uranium enrichment, Solana said.

Looking ahead, Solana said a second meeting between the P5+1 and Iran will be held “before the end of October” and will focus on nuclear issues, including the proposals that both sides have put forward. The meeting “will also deal with some global issues that any of the parties wish to address,” he said.

On October 18 in Vienna, technical experts from the IAEA, the United States, Russia and other countries will work out details on how to implement the deal that would take low-enriched uranium from Iran to a third country for further enrichment and processing, before being returned for use in an Iranian research reactor, where it would produce “isotopes for medical application,” Solana said.

The EU representative said the day’s talks had been “only a start,” which will need to be followed by progress on the practical steps that had been discussed. “It has been a day in which I hope that we continue … with the intensive process in order to solve the many problems that still have to be resolved,” he said.