IRAN: Nuclear talks kick off in Tehran

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European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana arrived this morning in Tehran as the head of a delegation trying to defuse the international crisis over Iran’s nuclear program.

The United States, Israel and Europe are alarmed by Iran’s increasing mastery of the technically complicated process of teasing out isotopes from uranium ore to create enriched fissile material that can be used to either fuel an electricity plant or build a nuclear bomb.

There’s been a lot of talk of war or increased sanctions if Iran doesn’t halt the program, which arms control experts view as a potential cornerstone of an eventual nuclear weapons arsenal.

Prospects for a solution don’t look so hot. Solana handed Iran a proposed package of incentives to halt its program similar to the one rejected by Tehran in 2006. Christina Golash, Solana’s spokeswoman, was quoted on Iranian television as saying that Europe and Iran are ‘ready to establish a new energy relations,’ a possible hint of an offer to increase investment in the country’s oil and gas fields.

But that’s not likely to to get Iran to halt enrichment.

‘Iran does not accept any precondition which implies suspension of uranium enrichment,’ said Gholam-Hossein Elham, a spokesman for the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A fourth round of economic sanctions against Iran could come up within a month.

Iran has also offered a vague package of proposals which does not include any hint of suspending the enrichment program, something the U.S. has demanded.

But some U.S. officials have warmed up to an idea promoted by a group of MIT scientists in which Iran’s enrichment facilities would be operated by an international consortium, according to a report this week in the Boston Globe. In the past, Iran has welcomed the idea of such a consortium.

In any case, unlike 2006, there are hints Solana intends to go public with the package of incentives so that ordinary Iranians will know what their leaders are passing up.

Iranians says the West needs to bend and hold off some more in what Europeans and Americans view as part of an endless series of stalling tactics.

‘We should give more time ... to digest the Iranian package of proposals because understanding Iran’s stances takes time and needs a U-turn [by the West] which cannot happen quickly,’ Hossein Hashemian, an Iranian Middle East specialist, said in an interview on Iranian state television.

— Borzou Daragahi in Beirut and Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran