Iran announces venues for P5+1 talks

Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) has announced that the first round of the fresh talks between Tehran and the P5+1 will be held in the Turkish city of Istanbul, and the second will be in Baghdad. “Following several rounds of negotiations between the deputies of [SNSC secretary] Saeed Jalili and [EU foreign policy chief] Catherine Ashton, the two sides agreed to hold the first round of talks on Saturday, April 14 in Istanbul and the second round in Baghdad,” the council’s secretariat announced on Monday. The sides also agreed to announce the time for the Baghdad talks at the end of the Istanbul meeting, IRIB reported. Earlier on Monday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi stressed that Tehran would not accept any preconditions for the negotiations with the P5+1 -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the US plus Germany, expressing hope that a new round of talks would yield win-win results. “Setting conditions before the meeting means drawing conclusions before negotiations, which is completely meaningless and none of the parties will accept conditions set before the talks,” he stated. Iran and the P5+1 have held two rounds of multifaceted talks, one in Geneva in December 2010 and another in the Turkish city of Istanbul in January 2011. Tehran says it is ready to resume the talks based on common grounds; however, it has repeatedly made it clear that it will not negotiate over any of its nuclear rights. Iran maintains that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has the right to acquire and develop nuclear technology for peaceful objectives