EU urges Iran back to table

The EU has urged Iran to seize the opportunities offered to it by the international community and get back to the negotiating table.

On Thursday the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China said they were ready to offer Iran a package deal.

“Iran should grasp the hand extended to it and return to the negotiating table,” Austrian foreign minister Ursula Plassnik said in a statement.

As current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, Vienna says a resumption of talks “could also facilitate the development of a perspective for the future after decades of ’non-relations’ between Iran and the US.”

The latest scheme would include new rewards if Tehran agreed to give up uranium enrichment.

Although no details have been made public, sources say they could include giving Iran a nuclear reactor and an assured supply of enriched uranium.

But there would also be punishment if Iran refuses to comply.

“We have never denied Iran the right to a nuclear programme that exclusively serves the purpose of generating energy,” Plassnik said.

“However, this requires Iran to restore the necessary basis of trust and provide convincing guarantees of the transparency and verifiability of its programme.”

The proposals will be raised with Tehran in the coming days.

Officials say Iran will have just weeks to decide whether to accept the package.

There has been no official reaction yet from Tehran and Iran has so far defied interntaional requests - by refusing to halt its uranium enrichment programmes. 

On Friday, Washington’s latest intervention turn up the heat in what is an already febrile debate.

Senior US intelligence chief, John Negroponte told the BBC that Iran is determined to have a nuclear weapon and could possess one within 10 years.

The director of national intelligence said Tehran could have a nuclear bomb ready between 2010 and 2015.

The US has so far refused direct talks with Iran over the issue.

But this week secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said Washington would come to the table when Iran fully and verifiably suspended its enrichment and reprocessing activities.

Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki welcomed the idea of talks with the US but again ruled out any compromise on enrichment.

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