Iran\'s top negotiator heads for Geneva for necular talks with world powers

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, heading a high-ranking delegation, left Tehran for Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday. Zarif and his accompanying delegation are slated to attend the upcoming talks between Iran and Group5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) in Geneva on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Iranian delegations includes Deputy Foreign Minister for European and American Affairs Majid Takht Ravanchi, Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Seyed Abbas Araqchi, Foreign Ministry\'s Director-General for the Economic and Specialized International Affairs Hamid Ba\'eedinejad, Legal Advisor to the Foreign Ministry Davoud Mohammadnia, and Mohammad Amiri from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI). Iran and the world powers held a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York in September and are due to meet again in Geneva on October 15-16. On April 6, Iran and the six world powers wrapped up two days of intensive negotiations in Almaty, but without making any major breakthrough. 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.