“I think it's good to see that the letter has arrived,” AFP quoted Ashton, who was in Washington to discuss the note with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on Friday.
“There is a potential possibility that Iran may be ready to start talks. We'll continue to discuss and make sure that what we're looking at is substantive,” Ashton added.
Announcing Tehran’s readiness to resume talks, Secretary of Iran Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili said on Wednesday that the success of negotiations is tied to the P5+1’s (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US plus Germany) constructive approach to the Islamic Republic’s initiatives.
Iran and the P5+1 held two rounds of multifaceted talks in Geneva in December 2010 and in the Turkish city of Istanbul in January 2011.
While Tehran says it is ready to continue the talks based on common grounds, it has stressed that it will not give up any of its rights.
The United States, Israel, and some of their allies accuse Iran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program and have used this pretext to impose international and unilateral sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Iran, however, maintains that, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has every right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
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European Union (EU) Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton has welcomed the letter from Iran indicating Tehran’s readiness to resume talks with the major world powers over its nuclear program.
News ID 181503
