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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran, US announce surprise nuclear talks |
| 2014-06-08 |
| [Al Ahram] Iran and the United States will hold their first bilateral talks in decades, it was announced Saturday, in a major step toward securing a comprehensive nuclear deal with the West. The head to head discussions will take place in Geneva on Monday and Tuesday, Iran's foreign ministry said in a surprise statement carried by the official IRNA news agency. A State Department official confirmed the meeting, noting the US delegation would be led by Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Undersecretary Wendy Sherman, who is responsible for Iran negotiations. The two-day meeting is the most senior direct bilateral contact on the nuclear issue so far, with Iran to be represented at vice foreign minister level. The discussions in Geneva are also the first between Iran and the US to fall outside the P5+1 group of leading nations (Britannia, China, La Belle France, Russia, the United States plus Germany) which is pursuing talks in the quest for a landmark nuclear agreement. Iran and the US, at odds since the 1979 Islamic revolution and the hostage crisis that followed, have in the past year taken tentative steps on the path to rapprochement. President Hassan Rouhani, a self-declared moderate elected last June, spoke by telephone with his US counterpart Barack Obama Jedi mind meld... shortly after taking office. Such a step had not occurred since the revolution and would have been considered unthinkable under Rouhani's predecessor Mahmoud Short RoundAhmadinejad, under whom relations with the West plummeted. US Secretary of State John F. I was in Vietnam, you knowKerry Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a lucky hat,conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State... also briefly met Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Geneva last year. The apparent thaw in relations is aimed at ending decades of enmity between the countries, with an accord on Iran's nuclear activities the apparent prize sought by the US and other world powers. |
| Posted by:Fred |