Iran, U.S. held secret talks: report

Atul Aneja

DUBAI: Diplomats from Iran and United States have secretly met in New York to establish a covert channel of communication, Israeli daily Haaretz has said.

The newspaper said the two sides met at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York ahead of the U.N. General Assembly session, which began on Thursday. “American and Iranian officials discussed a U.S. initiative to establish unofficial diplomatic relations,” it said.

The report follows efforts to revive a dialogue between the global powers and Tehran to resolve the nuclear issue. On Wednesday, Foreign Ministers of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany issued a joint statement calling for full-fledged dialogue to resolve their nuclear row with Iran. “Our objective continues to be a comprehensive long-term negotiated solution which restores international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme”, the statement said. The statement followed a meeting hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the visiting Foreign Ministers, which included E.U. foreign policy chief Catharine Ashton.

Hard issues

A senior U.S. State Department official said during the course of a press briefing on Wednesday that a deal on a nuclear fuel exchange would “build confidence and pave the way for tackling the hard issues at the core of Iran's nuclear programme”.

Analysts point out that the broad outlines of a road map for the resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis, which would disallow Iran to acquire nuclear weapon status, but permit low-level enrichment, is beginning to emerge. The global powers during future negotiations are expected to link fuel transfers to Tehran to an Iranian commitment to stop 20 per cent enrichment of uranium — a step that Iran had undertaken since February.