WASHINGTON - Iran hopes all sides in upcoming talks on its nuclear
program will commit to comprehensive dialogue and that negotiators make
"genuine efforts to reestablish confidence and trust," Iranian Foreign
Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an opinion piece published in The Washington Post on Friday.
Salehi
said that to "solve the nuclear issue," the scope of talks this weekend
in Istanbul between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN
Security Council and Germany must address the concerns of all sides.
"Complex
matters that have been left unaddressed for decades cannot be solved
overnight," Salehi said. "Another sign of mutual respect is a
willingness and readiness to both give and take, without preconditions."
Salehi said dialogue "must be seen as a process" and not an event.
"If
the intention of dialogue is merely to prevent cold conflict from
turning hot, rather than to resolve differences, suspicion will linger.
Trust will not be established," Salehi said.
The
P5+1 group - Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and
Germany - will meet with Iran for the first time in more than a year,
hoping Tehran will give enough ground on its nuclear program to extend
negotiations and avert the possibility of an Israeli or US military
strike on Iran.
Salehi said Iran had many times "marked our opposition to weapons of mass destruction."
Tehran says it is refining uranium solely for electricity and medical treatments. Western states do not believe that.
Major
powers want the Iranians to outline steps to show that they have
abandoned any pursuit of nuclear arms, US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton said on Thursday.
"We are receiving signals that they are
bringing ideas to the table," Clinton told reporters. "We want them to
demonstrate, clearly, in the actions they propose that they have truly
abandoned any nuclear weapons ambition."
"We are looking for
concrete results. And of course, in a negotiation, we understand that
the Iranians will be asking for assurances or actions from us and we
will certainly take those under consideration," Clinton said, without
providing details.