(AhlulBayt News Agency) - The talks began just a day after Tehran announced it had produced its first home-grown batch of uranium yellowcake instead of seeking to import new supplies.
The negotiations, scheduled to last two days, began promptly Monday morning at the building of the Swiss mission to the UN, with the European Union's top diplomat, Catherine Ashton, and Iran's chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili and officials from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States sitting around a table, Swiss organizers said.
Jalili began talks by making a strong protest against the recent assassination of a top nuclear scientist in Tehran, according to Iranian sources.
A diplomat close to the world powers said before the talks opened: "We are expecting a serious response from the Iranians. We do not know what is Iran's state of mind."
A Western official said that a second plenary would be held later Monday after the talks broke for lunch, while another diplomat close to the world powers added that bilateral meetings with the Iranians would also be held.
The meeting, a mirror image of the talks in October 2009, is taking place amid Tehran's demand that a host of issues, including a wide range of international issues such as terrorism, be included in the talks.
Iranian officials, led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have reiterated in recent days that the country's nuclear plans are non-negotiable.
Iranian atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi added a new dimension by revealing that Iran was now "self-sufficient" in the entire nuclear fuel cycle by being able to supply itself with the raw material for fuel, and would enter the talks with world powers "with strength and power".
"Other countries cannot interfere in Iranian nuclear affairs," said Ali Bagheri, the deputy negotiator.
"The result of this meeting depends on the attitudes of the other party," he added.
Officials close to the talks cited serious internal divisions among the P5+1 negotiating teams.
Also in the absence of a specific agenda and disagreements over the content of the talks, negotiators for the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus German were said to ask for nothing other than deciding the date and venue of the next round of talks.
Iran, instead, was set to raise issues cited in Jalili's letter to Ashton, and turn the talks to a "court trial" of the P5+1 over the assassination of an Iranian university professor.
"The 5+1 group has not reached consensus on a specific agenda. Hence, Mrs. Ashton has entered the talks with a very weak position while the group suffers from internal problems," the Fars news agency reported from the site of the talks.
Fars also said most of the P5+1 group had sent new faces to the talks. "Iranian diplomats believe the change is harmful to the talks because the new representatives who lack necessary experience will certainly be unable to enter into serious discussions with Iran," the news agency said.
Leading U.S. daily, The Christian Science Monitor, said, "some Iranian officials say their nuclear program which has made substantial progress on nuclear enrichment, despite new sanctions won't even be on the agenda". "And if it is, the political and technical landscape has changed so much in the past year – proof that U.S. efforts have backfired, say analysts – that Iran's hand is stronger going into these talks," it said.
"While Iran is set on pursuing its independent uranium enrichment policy, and when the U.S. is not in a position of starting a new war in the region, time is against Washington," The Monitor cited Kayhan Barzegar, an Iran specialist at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, as saying.
"Perhaps the Obama administration is now willing to initiate the talks, but it has not reached a final decision yet because it is waiting to see the impact of tough sanctions against Iran," said Barzegar, contacted in Tehran, where he also serves as a director at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies. "This is the wrong policy because sanctions will not change Iran's nuclear policy."
The last talks in Geneva in October 2009 ended with cautious optimism following the first direct encounter between senior U.S. and Iranian officials for 30 years.
But proposals for a deal on enriching Iran's uranium outside the country for a research reactor in Tehran swiftly unraveled afterwards.
Since then, Iran has increased its stock of 3.5% enriched uranium, up from 1,580 kilograms in October 2009 to 3,183 kg now.
Of this the Christian Science Monitor said, "What started as a confidence-building measure has now turned into a tangled mix of Western motivations and Iranian defiance, complicating the talks that are about to begin."
The paper cited U.S. misconceptions about Iran's activities. "The U.S. thinks it has Iran 'on the run'," it quoted Ivanka Barzashka, a research associate with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, as saying.
"It's easy if you are sitting at the State Department to say: 'We're steamrolling these guys,'" said Barzashka. "But at the same time, Iran is pushing forward with 20% enrichment. They're pushing forward with their own fuel manufacture."
In the latest issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Barzegar wrote, "If the U.S. is serious about a diplomatic solution, it must recognize Iran's right to enrich uranium on its soil and accept Iran's indispensability for maintaining stability in the Persian Gulf."
"Iran, in turn, will reciprocate by agreeing to more rigorous inspections by the IAEA to demonstrate the peaceful nature of its nuclear program."
In addition, he told the Monitor that Iran's avowed willingness to stop 20% enrichment if the U.S. shows goodwill underscores that nuclear talks need not be a zero-sum game in which only one country benefits.
"The nature of Iran's nuclear program is such that it directs Iran and the United States to either interact or engage in war," he said. "In other words, it is either a win-win game or a lose-lose game, and not a win-lose game."
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