Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in an interview with USA Today Tuesday, said the United States and its P5+1 partners have reached a united position on what to seek from Iran in a near-term confidence building measure, and have relayed the outlines of the proposed deal to Iran ahead of new nuclear talks in Baghdad next week.
“There is a unified position by the P-5+1 going into Baghdad which sets forth what we would expect to see Iran do on what kind of timetable to reassure the international community that it is not and will not seek nuclear weapons,” Clinton said in an interview with USA Today’s Richard Wolf, sent to journalists by the State Department.
Stressing the unity of the P5+1 group-the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Russia and China-going into the Baghdad talks, Clinton said the success of the talks depends largely at this point on Iran’s response.
“So once the unified position was agreed to, there has been outreach by the P-5+1 to the Iranians to say, ‘Here is an idea of what we’re expecting, that we want to see as the core of any negotiations, so we want you to come prepared,'” Clinton stressed, adding: “Because we don’t want to just have a meeting where we present and they say, ‘We’ll get back to you,’ because time is of the essence.”
“So we will be taking stock in Baghdad, but we come in good faith,” Clinton added. “We come with an appropriate set of actions that could be taken by Iran that would be reassuring to the international community, and we wouldn’t be going if we didn’t expect to see Iran respond in kind.”
{Back Channel/Matzav.com Newscenter}
