Iran must return to talks with world powers over its 2015 nuclear deal to avoid an escalation, a French presidency official said on Tuesday, adding that there was no need to set new conditions because the parameters for an accord were clear.
The official told reporters that world powers negotiating with Iran needed to remain united and that China especially needed to “express itself and act in a more determined way.”
“Nobody wants an escalation, but to avoid an escalation Iran must return to the negotiating table,” the French presidency official told reporters.
Tehran has signalled in recent weeks that negotiations would resume in a few weeks without giving a specific date, increasing frustration among the Western parties – Britain, France, Germany and the United States – to the 2015 accord.
“The more that time passes, the harder it becomes to return to the negotiating table…and the key question of restoring a manageable and acceptable breakout time for us becomes complicated to resolve,” the official said, referring to the time it takes to amass enough fissile material for a single nuclear weapon.
Meanwhile, Iran on Tuesday rejected a US call to grant UN inspectors access to a nuclear site, saying Washington was not qualified to demand inspections without condemning a sabotage attack on the facility, Iranian state media reported.
“Countries that did not condemn terrorist acts against Iran’s nuclear site are not qualified to comment on inspections there,” Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said during a visit to Moscow, according to Iranian state news agency IRNA.
Source: Alarabiya
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