Lavrov: Russia ready to help end Iran-West nuclear standoff

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov underlined Moscow's will to help both Iran and the West remove their differences on Tehran's nuclear program. “Russia is ready for collective work for the sake of achieving a practical result,” the Russian top diplomat noted at a Tuesday meeting with representatives of Islamic states in Moscow on the occasion of the Islamic New Year. “We hope that all parties in the talks will demonstrate political will and readiness for compromise, and that they will not give the absolute priority to geopolitical considerations and not undermine a real chance to accomplish a breakthrough in settling this rather acute problem,” Lavrov said. In relevant remarks on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hong Lei expressed satisfaction with the progressive path Iran and the six world powers have recently pursued in their talks on Tehran nuclear program, and pledged to apply Beijing's full capacity to help resolve the nuclear standoff through peaceful ways.   Senior Iranian officials announced on Tuesday that any further progress in the talks with the Group 5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France plus Germany) would depend on the world powers' proper response in the upcoming round of talks in Geneva. “The era of talks-for-talks has ended and we look at the negotiations with pragmatic optimism to see how the other sides will respond to Iran’s proposals,” Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham said in her weekly press conference in Tehran on Tuesday. Stressing that the two sides have not yet decided on the first step to settle the Iran-West nuclear standoff, she said, “Whether we want to present a renewed proposal on the first step depends on the G5+1’s response to the presented proposals (in the previous round of talks in Geneva in mid October).” “In this trend, the first and the last steps should be specified and the methods to implement them will be discussed then,” Afkham said. She blasted the US for continuing its pressure-and-talks approach towards Iran, and advised the American officials to take lesson from the past and remember that this approach has not yielded any result for them. Asked about the results of the last week expert talks between Iran and the world powers in Vienna, Afkham said no decision was made in the meeting. "The details and processes related to the oil, banking and nuclear sanctions were studied in these talks and what has been grasped by experts from these talks is due to be reflected to the high-ranking officials of both sides." The results of the expert talks will be studied in the Thursday and Friday meetings of Iran and the G5+1, she added. The last week expert talks followed two days of negotiations between top diplomats of Iran and the world powers in Geneva on October 15 and 16. Both Tehran and the delegations of the G5+1 voiced satisfaction in the outcomes of the Geneva meeting and decided to send their experts to two days of talks in Vienna on October 30 and 31 to discuss details of Iran's new proposal for soothing the crisis. Iran and the six world powers agreed in their third session of talks on October 15 to follow up on the nuclear negotiations on November 7 and 8. At the end of the negotiations, EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton hailed the nuclear negotiations as the “most detailed” and most “substantive” ones ever held between the two sides.