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Is there a way out of Iranian nuclear deadlock?

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MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Goncharov). -- Is there a way to break the deadlock over the Iranian nuclear problem without submitting the Iranian nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council?

The talks between Iran and the European Union (EU) have not yet come up with a positive answer to this question.

Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is to submit a new report on the Iranian nuclear program to the IAEA Board of Governors by September 3. Many experts say that this date could mark the start of "the latest, planned" aggravation of the crisis.

The report by the IAEA head will highlight the Iranian experiments to obtain plutonium and discuss the progress of the talks between Tehran and the EU. The report's conclusions will determine whether or not the agency will submit the dossier to the UN Security Council.

Iran is not particularly concerned about attention being drawn to its plutonium experiments, as inspectors have found only a few milligrams of plutonium, which cannot serve as a formal reason for sending the Iranian nuclear dossier to the UN.

However, Iran's talks with the EU, which are supervised by the IAEA, are quite another matter. The international community thinks that these talks offer the best hope of finding a solution to the Iranian nuclear problems, but negotiations broke down recently, just ahead of the IAEA session on September 3.

The European Trio (France, Germany and Britain) refused to resume the talks on the scheduled date, August 31, accusing Iran of violating the Paris agreements. In retaliation, Tehran accused the Trio of abusing its powers within the same Paris agreements and questioned the expediency of continuing talks in the present format.

The two sides have smoothed over this latest conflict, but as the talks become more and more heated it is logical to ask: is there a way out of the Iranian nuclear deadlock? The situation is paradoxical, as Tehran cannot prove to the EU that it does not have a nuclear weapons program, while the EU cannot convince Tehran to terminate it (the military program).

Can the negotiating parties find a compromise that will suit all of them and, most importantly, that will suit Iran's main opponent, the United States? Under pressure from Washington, the IAEA inspectors have scoured Iran's nuclear facilities in the past nine-ten months, trying to find traces of enriched uranium. They did find traces, but they were very minor and led to Pakistan.

There is another crucial issue on which the parties cannot agree. The EU is demanding that Iran should abandon its uranium enrichment program for good, while Tehran claims that it has an "inalienable right" to create a full nuclear fuel cycle, stressing that the word "fuel" points to its peaceful character. Once again this raises the question of whether the talks really can move forward.

Ali Larijani, the new secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and the man who is responsible for the Iranian nuclear program, has said that Tehran will soon put forward new initiatives that will break the deadlock. The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may announce these initiatives at the UN General Assembly session in September, though Tehran promised to make them public within four-six weeks.

Larijani recently met with ElBaradei. The Iranian news agency IRNA reports that the IAEA general director accepted an invitation to visit Iran for talks with officials.

Will his visit jump-start the Iran-EU talks? Everything will depend on the nature of Iran's "new initiatives." If Iran continues to claim the "inalienable" right to enrich uranium, ElBaradei's visit could prove totally unproductive, and the same question will arise yet again: is there a way out of the deadlock over the Iranian nuclear problem that does not necessitate the involvement of the UN Security Council?

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