Brussels, Nov. 30: Iran agreed on Tuesday to a new round of talks in Geneva on December 6 and 7 with world powers on its controversial nuclear programme, an EU foreign affairs spokesman said.
The Iran chief negotiator, Mr Said Jalili, will meet for talks with the EU chief diplomat, Ms Catherine Ashton, who will lead the international delegation, the spokesman said.
“We’ve now received a response from the Iranian authorities in which they have said that Mr Jalili has accepted Ms Ashton’s proposal to meet in Geneva,” the spokesman said.
“Talks between Ms Catherine Ashton and Mr Jalili will now take place on Monday and Tuesday next week in Geneva.”
Mr Ashton would lead the so-called “3+3” or “5+1” group of nations negotiating with Iran made up of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain) and Germany.
The talks will be the first since October 2009.
The sanctions had “without doubt pushed Tehran back to the negotiating table,” the official said.
Iran is under four sets of UN sanctions for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, the sensitive process which can be used to make nuclear fuel or, in highly extended form, the fissile core of an atom bomb. The US fears that Iran wants to build a bomb.