ARE IRAN'S ARGUMENTS MORE CONVINCING FOR THE EU THAN U.S. FEARS?

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MOSCOW. (Pyotr Goncharov, RIA Novosti commentator) -- The talks held last week between the EU and Tehran in Geneva on Iran's nuclear program looked like they had been thoroughly orchestrated and it will be interesting to see what happens now.

The next episode is expected either on June 13, when the IAEA Board of Governors will meet, or after a new Cabinet is formed in Iran following the June 17 presidential elections.

At the concluding round of talks in Geneva, the EU proposed that Tehran submit for its consideration a general project of EU-Iran cooperation covering various aspects, including nuclear technology cooperation, within two months. The proposal, it must be admitted, was unexpected and contradicted the logic of the talks held in the past.

Tehran tried in vain to convince the EU that its nuclear program was absolutely peaceful, including the complete technological cycle of uranium enrichment it is developing. Tehran might have convinced the EU, if it had not been for the U.S., which continued to tell the Europeans about its fears that Tehran's assurances masked a desire to develop its own nuclear weapons. Therefore, the EU attempted to make Iran give up the idea of enriching uranium completely to ensure that its dossier was not transferred to the UN Security Council.

Prior to the Geneva talks, the EU had warned Tehran that if it did not scrap its uranium enrichment program, a debate on Iran's nuclear dossier in the UN Security Council would be inevitable. It is perfectly clear that a Security Council discussion is a sure way to sanctions. But then at the close of the talks, the European troika (Germany, France and Britain) delegated by the EU and EU High Commissioner for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana, as if forgetting about the previous tough terms, suddenly proposed that Tehran consider a general project for cooperation, including in nuclear technologies.

Perhaps the EU took the view that Tehran's arguments in favor of its nuclear program were more convincing than the U.S. concerns over its military component? This is hardly likely. The finale had probably been planned in advance, and Europe got what it had wanted from the start.

The need to find a way out of the Iranian impasse has long been obvious to everyone involved in the talks, including the IAEA and Russia, which seemed to be invisibly present there. It looks like London, Paris and Berlin (which play a direct role in the talks) understand that the Iranian nuclear issue cannot be resolved by a frontal attack, not even with the help of the Security Council.

Russian nuclear nonproliferation experts in Moscow say that the very idea of imposing sanctions on Iran on charges of devising a program of uranium enrichment is an exceptional case from the legal viewpoint. Iran's drafting of a nuclear fuel program, including not only uranium enrichment components, but also plutonium regeneration and the construction of a heavy-water reactor, is not a legal violation of the provisions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

Iran's withdrawal from the treaty will be legally justified if the Iranian dossier is handed over to the Security Council on the basis of accusations generated by Washington's fears. In addition, Iran has a fairly substantial argument in its favor: to ensure confidence in its nuclear programs and their transparency, it has met all the requirements of the Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, including the installation of tracking cameras at its nuclear facilities and staging IAEA inspections.

Whether this level of transparency at Iran's nuclear facilities will be enough for the IAEA to close the ill-fated nuclear dossier is another matter. But the Iranian leadership made it abundantly clear in the run-up to the talks that if the Iranian nuclear dossier were to be handed over to the UN Security Council, the problem that is currently being resolved through talks would turn into a crisis that the Europeans could not control, while Iran would be "free from all [its] commitments to act at its own discretion." In other words, it would be released from its NPT obligations.

Such a development would not satisfy anyone - neither the EU nor the global community as a whole. In fact, the European troika, which is Russia's main rival in large-scale cooperation with Iran in the nuclear sphere, would be particularly unhappy.

Leaks to the press about how the EU would offer Iran projects in the nuclear sphere, such as "the construction of 10 nuclear power-generating blocks" if it refrained from enriching uranium, were surely no coincidence. For Russia it means competition, and its nuclear industry is strong enough for it to have no fear of fair competition.

The outcome of the Geneva talks shocked the U.S. But as Alexei Arbatov, a Russian political scientist, says: "It is time for the U.S. to stop holding Iran in contempt and join the negotiating process."

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