TEHRAN, May 27 (RIA Novosti) - The talks between Iran's top nuclear negotiator and the European Union's foreign policy chief have been postponed, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Sunday.
Ali Larijani and the EU's Javier Solana were expected to meet May 31, possibly in Span, to discuss the prospect of restarting talks on Iran's controversial nuclear program.
"The talks have been postponed on agreement between both sides," Larijani said, adding that the time and place of future negotiations had not been specified so far.
Since Iran resumed uranium enrichment in January 2006, the country has been the focus of international concerns, as some Western countries, particularly the U.S., suspect Tehran is pursuing a covert weapons program. But Tehran has consistently claimed it needs nuclear power for civilian power generation and is fully entitled to its own nuclear program.
On Wednesday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), presented a report that said Iran has continued to ignore the demands of the UN Security Council to halt its uranium enrichment and has continued working on nuclear projects.
The report could trigger a new wave of sanctions against Iran, which will be the third since penalties were first introduced against it in December 2006.
On April 19, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran had mastered industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel, giving up a research-level program. Recent reports said Tehran was already running 1,600 uranium enrichment centrifuges in its Natanz underground complex.
