TEHRAN, Sept 14, (Agencies): Iran agreed on Monday to hold talks with six world powers next month on its latest proposals to allay concerns over its nuclear programme, in a move Washington welcomed as an “important first step.” EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana spoke by telephone with Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and they agreed that talks would be held on Oct 1 between Iran and representatives of the six powers. “Iran is ready for a serious dialogue in October,” Jalili said. “This morning we reached an agreement with the Iranians to hold a meeting on Oct 1,” Solana’s spokeswoman said. She said the venue for the talks between Iran and the six governments — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — was still to be decided.
Washington welcomed Tehran’s agreement to enter talks. “Let’s say it’s an important first step and one hopes for the best,” US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the UN atomic watchdog in Vienna. The six powers had called for urgent talks with Iran after it handed new proposals to their representatives on Wednesday. Washington had expressed disappointment with the package, saying it was “not really responsive to our greatest concern,” but Moscow said it offered “something to dig into.”

According to a copy of the proposals obtained and published by US non-profit investigative journalism group, Pro Publica, Iran said it was prepared to hold “comprehensive, all-encompassing and constructive negotiations.”
The talks would address nuclear disarmament as well as a global framework for the use of “clean nuclear energy,” the document said, without specifically referring to Iran’s own nuclear programme.
Foreign ministers of the six powers will meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next week to prepare for the talks with Iran, French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.
They will be the first since the hotly disputed re-election of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a June vote that sparked Iran’s worst unrest since the 1979 revolution.
Ahmadinejad, who will himself attend the General Assembly next week, said on Sunday that Iran was ready to talk with world powers about global issues but not to negotiate over Tehran’s right to nuclear technology.
Foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi reiterated the point on Monday.
“It is obvious that the Iranian people will not negotiate about their undeniable nuclear rights,” he told a news conference.
But Ghashghavi said Iran was trying to allay Western concerns that it is seeking to develop an atomic bomb under cover of its nuclear programme.

“As you saw, one of the objectives of the package is to certainly remove the concern about the nuclear issue by focusing on global disarmament and implementing a slogan that nuclear energy is for everyone, but atomic bomb for no one,” he said.
Ghashghavi said the issue of global nuclear disarmament could act as a “good basis for discussions”.
The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, also said Tehran was ready to discuss the issues in the package.
“But it is obvious we will not negotiate about our nuclear rights,” the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying in Vienna.
The six powers have been pressing Iran to agree to suspend uranium enrichment, the process which produces nuclear fuel or, in highly extended form, the fissile core of an atomic bomb.
Tehran has ignored repeated UN Security Council ultimatums to halt the sensitive activity and has been punished with three sets of UN sanctions.
In April, the six powers urged Iran to begin negotiations by the end of September or risk further sanctions.
The European Union’s Swedish presidency said on Monday the outcome of the talks should be awaited before weighing any threat of future sanctions.

“The focus now should be on that particular meeting,” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told reporters in Brussels. “Exactly what will happen after that is somewhat dependent on what happens in the talks.”
In Vienna, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog urged the UN Security Council to give it more powers to prevent the spread of atom bomb technology and avoid relying on sanctions he said often did not work.
Mohamed ElBaradei’s call was a clear reference to the case of Iran, which is expanding a declared uranium enrichment programme without clarifying allegations of illicit nuclear weapons research.
But the chief US delegate, in contrast with ElBaradei’s message, said any nuclear outlaws must face “serious consequences” at the Security Council, an apparent allusion to sanctions.

“Failure to impose meaningful consequences puts at risk everything we have achieved (with non-proliferation rules). We cannot let this happen,” said US Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said on Monday the time had come for tougher sanctions against Iran.
“I believe that now is the time to start harsh sanctions against Iran — if not now then when? These harsh sanctions can be effective,” Netanyahu was quoted by a parliamentary official as telling a legislative committee.
“I believe that the international community can act effectively,” said Netanyahu, whose country is widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear power.

His comments appeared to signal — amid wide speculation that Israel could opt to attack Iranian nuclear facilities — that it had not given up on international diplomacy to curb Tehran’s atomic ambitions.
In Brussels, a spokeswoman for European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana confirmed he had talked to Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili on the phone and that they had agreed on a meeting on Oct 1.
Solana has been representing the six powers — the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia — in long-running efforts to defuse the row over Iranian atomic activity which the West suspects is aimed at making bombs.
“It’s an important first step and we are hoping for the best,” US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said in Vienna about the talks announced for early October.

Media in Iran, which says its nuclear programme is for peaceful power purposes, said the venue had yet to be decided.
“In talks between Saeed Jalili and Javier Solana, Oct 1 was announced as the starting date of Iran’s talks with the 5+1 countries,” the semi-official Mehr News Agency said, referring to the group of six powers.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Monday formally appointed Yukiya Amano of Japan as its new director general from Dec 1, succeeding ElBaradei.
The 150 member states of the UN nuclear watchdog approved Amano — who has been Tokyo’s ambassador to the IAEA — by acclamation on the first day of the agency’s annual week-long general conference ElBaradei is stepping down at the end of November after 12 years in office.
Amano, 62, was chosen by the IAEA’s 35-member board of governors — its main decision-making body — in July, but his appointment had to formally be adopted by all 150 member states at the general conference.
He will take up the position on Dec 1 and initially serve for a period of four years until end-November 2013.
The change in leadership comes at a crucial time for the agency, with its six-year investigation into Iran’s controversial nuclear drive currently in stalemate.

Iran trials
In an unrelated development, six opposition activists, including a former student leader, stood trial Monday in Tehran on charges of rioting and plotting a “velvet revolution” to topple the ruling Islamic system.
The hearing is the latest session of a mass trial that began Aug 1 of more than 100 opposition supporters on accusations of plotting to overthrow the clerical leadership through protests over the disputed June 12 presidential election.
The trial of Abdollah Momeni and five others is part of government’s efforts to choke off a persistent protest movement by Iranians who claim President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election involved massive vote fraud.
While dozens of activists and protesters were tried in previous sessions, state television said only six activists were in the dock Monday and this time around the trials were not broadcast.
The television said the Monday indictment against the six defendants focused on “spreading false reports via Internet to provoke unrest.”

The official IRNA news agency quoted Momeni as pleading guilty to the charges and asking for “Islamic mercy.”
“I don’t consider my political activities defensible. I apologize to the Iranian nation and request Islamic mercy from the court,” IRNA quoted him as saying.
Meanwhile, Iran has freed a close aide to opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and a prominent lawyer who belongs to Nobel prize winner Shirin Ebadi’s rights group, the ILNA news agency reported on Sunday.
Alireza Beheshti, the aide, was freed on Saturday night, ILNA said.
He was arrested on Tuesday following a raid on his office, which was set up to probe alleged post-vote prisoners’ abuse.
ILNA also said that lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah was freed on Sunday after posting bail of five billion rials ($500,000).

Obama
US President Barack Obama is a “prisoner” in the hands of “extremist Republicans” and is unable to change American policy towards Iran, a top aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charged on Monday.
“Mr Obama’s behaviour and the positions he has taken show that he is still a prisoner in the hands of extremist Republicans and is unable to wipe out the policies of (former president George W.) Bush from the White House,” Ali Akbar Javanfekr, Ahmadinejad’s media advisor, was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency.
“The interfering stance of the US after the Iranian election and his refusal to congratulate the president of Iran on his victory overtly show that Obama is unable to adopt a new approach towards the Islamic republic and is being forced to take the path of the Republicans.”
Javanfekr also said that Ahmadinejad would not be holding talks with US officials during his visit to the UN General Assembly meeting later this month.
Ahmadinejad at a Tehran press conference a week ago had reiterated that he was ready to hold a debate with Obama to discuss global issues.
Javanfekr said American officials had not replied to the suggestion, which, he said, had made them “agitated.”
“The debate is one way of solving international issues, but it seems that this suggestion has made Americans agitated because so far we have not witnessed any positive feedback from the American president in this regard,” he said.