The West made serious miscalculations during talks with the Islamic Republic in the past. We hope Western negotiating sides will promote innovation in upcoming talks, said Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for European and American Affairs Ali Asghar Khaji in a meeting with Swedish Deputy Foreign Minister Frank Belfrage in Stockholm on Tuesday.
He added that the West’s efforts to exert pressure on the Iranian nation through unilateral sanctions are contrary to key principles of human rights.
However, such moves will have no impact on the will of the Iranian nation to pursue their absolute rights, Khaji pointed out.
He added that unprincipled policies of the European Union in imposing sanctions on Iran have intensified the economic crisis for European firms.
The Iranian deputy foreign minister held officials of European countries accountable for the negative impacts of their decisions on the crisis-hit Western institutions and companies.
He urged Western states to avoid repeating previous mistakes and to enter talks with Iran without any prejudgment.
EU foreign ministers approved sanctions against Iran on January 23, including a ban on Iranian oil imports, a freeze on the assets of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) within the bloc’s states and a ban on selling diamonds, gold, and other precious metals to Tehran.
The meeting came after EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, in a letter to Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili, called for the resumption of talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) over Tehran’s nuclear energy program.
"On behalf of China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the United States of America (the group’s member states), I have offered to resume talks with Iran on the nuclear issue," she said in a televised statement.
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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A top Iranian Foreign Ministry official raps Western powers for making miscalculations during previous talks with Iran over its nuclear energy program, urging more innovations in a fresh round of negotiations.
News ID 181570
