French MP hopes for diplomatic settlement of Iran-west nuclear standoff

French Lawmaker Joelle Garriaud-Maylam expressed the hope that the nuclear standoff between Iran and the western powers would be settled through diplomacy in near future. Speaking at a meeting with Head of the Iran-France Parliamentary Friendship Group Hassan Kamran in Tehran, Garriaud-Maylam hoped for the peaceful settlement of  the West’s dispute with Iran over its nuclear energy program, which, she said, will pave the way for the expansion of Iran-France ties too. A two-member French parliamentary delegation, comprised of Garriaud-Maylam and Jean-Yves Leconte, left Paris for Tehran in early hours of Wednesday to confer with senior officials here on the ways of bolstering mutual cooperation between the two countries. 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. Washington and its western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and the western embargos for turning down West\'s calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment. Tehran has dismissed West\'s demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians\' national resolve to continue the path. Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)\'s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.