Iran 6 to meet in Istanbul in mid-April

The Group of Six nations negotiating Iran’s nuclear program will meet for another round of talks in Istanbul on April 14, the Turkish foreign minister said on Tuesday. Western countries suspect Iran’s nuclear program to be a clandestine weapons program while Iran said it only needs nuclear research to generate energy. “We want to clear our region of all types of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. The Iran Six, which consists of Russia, Britain, Germany, China, the United States and France, have been seeking to persuade Iran since 2003 to halt its uranium enrichment program which they suspect may threaten the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The latest round of talks on the issue took place in Istanbul in late January but brought no results. Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, expressed frustration over the results and the international nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, said Iran had failed to provide evidence that its program was exclusively for peaceful purposes.