Ashton: G5+1 to Present Revised Proposal to Iran in Almaty Talks

(FNA)- EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton who leads the delegations of the world powers in talks with Iran said that the Group 5+1 (Russia, US, China, France, Britain plus Germany) is attending the talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, "with a revised offer" and hopes that the meeting would yield results.

Ashton made the remarks before the start of the new round of Iran-powers talks which kicked off in Almaty's Rixos Hotel at 13:30 local time (0730 GMT) earlier today and lasted for almost three hours.

"We are holding these talks with a view to making progress towards allaying the concerns of the international community on the nature of the Iranian nuclear program, and this round is no exception. We have come here with a revised offer and we have come to engage with Iran in a meaningful way, our purpose being to make sure that we've had a good and detailed conversation, with the ambition that we see progress by the end of the meeting," Ashton said before the first round of Tuesday meeting.

"Of course, the situation keeps changing: first of all we have to look at the situation within Iran. We also have to take account of what our previous discussions have told us, the issues that have been raised by Iran and the issues that have been raised within the E3+3 (G5+1) and in our discussions with the IAEA. All of that is taken into account in this revised offer," she added.

"The E3+3 are united. We work very closely together to make sure that the proposals we put forward are in all our names. We will, of course, take them forward with Iran should they be willing to engage," Ashton concluded.

After the first round of talks, negotiators of Iran and the world powers decided to attend a second round on Wednesday.

Iran and the Group 5+1 have held three rounds of talks in Geneva, two rounds in Istanbul, one round in Baghdad and one round in Moscow. The last round of talks between Iran and the Group 5+1 was held in Moscow in June.

Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and the western embargos for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.

Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path.

Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.