Geneva talks end without deal on Iran's nuclear programme | World news | The Observer - 0 views
www.theguardian.com/...talls-reactor-plutonium-france
war & peace Iranian nukes myth France Israel peace-talks P5+1
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Three gruelling days of high-level and high-stakes diplomacy came to an end in Geneva with no agreement on Iran's nuclear programme, after France blocked a stopgap deal aimed at defusing tensions and buying more time for negotiations.A six-nation group of major powers and Iran agreed only to meet again on 20 November, but on a lower level – senior diplomats rather than foreign ministers. The EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said: "A lot of concrete progress has been achieved, but differences remain." Asked about the part France had played, Ashton said that all parties to the talks had played an important role.The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, also sought to play down the disagreements that had surfaced with France, and the divisions between the six-nation group, known as the P5+1.
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Privately, however, other diplomats at the talks were furious with the role of the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, whom they accused of breaking ranks by revealing details of the negotiations as soon as he arrived in Geneva on Saturday morning, and then breaking protocol again by declaring the results to the press before Ashton and Zarif had arrived at the final press conference.
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French opposition was focused on a draft text agreement that laid out a short-term deal to slow down or stop elements of the Iranian nuclear programme in return for limited sanctions relief. The French complained that the text, which they said was mostly drafted by Iran and the US, had been presented as a fait accompli and they did not want to be stampeded into agreement.Fabius told France Inter radio yesterday morning that Paris would not accept a "fools' game". "As I speak to you, I cannot say there is any certainty that we can conclude," he said.
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Fabius said one of the key issues was Iran's heavy water reactor at Arak, which is due to reach completion next year after many delays. The west and Israel have called for construction work to stop as part of an interim deal aimed at buying time for negotiations on a more comprehensive long-term deal.Iran says the reactor's purpose is to produce nuclear isotopes that are useful for medical and agricultural purposes. But when operating it would produce plutonium as a by-product in its spent fuel, and that plutonium would represent a serious proliferation risk, giving an alternative route to making a bomb that would not depend on uranium enrichment. Israel has threatened to bomb the reactor before it starts operations, pointing out that once it is fuelled, bombing becomes impossible as it would scatter radioactive fallout around a large region.On the sidelines of the talks, which shifted from Geneva's Palais des Nations to the five-star Intercontinental Hotel after the foreign ministers arrived yesterday, some western officials accused France of sabotaging the hopes of a deal to curry favour with Israel and the Gulf Arab states.
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The Israeli propaganda myth of Iranian intent to build a nuclear deterrent, spread in the U.S. and elsewhere by devout Zionists/Neolibs intent on creation of an Israeli empire in the Mideast has achieved such broad acceptance in western nations that western leaders walk through a political minefield in reaching a deal to defuse the nuke myth.