GENEVA, Switzerland, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- Talks between Iran and major global powers ended Tuesday with an agreement to meet in Istanbul, Turkey, next month but little else, participants said.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, in a statement, called the talks in Geneva, Switzerland, about Iran's nuclear program "detailed, substantive" and said the parties would convene in January to "discuss practical ideas and ways of cooperating towards a resolution of our core concerns about the nuclear issue," The Washington Post reported.
French envoy Gerard Araud said the major powers "have been very united and very clear about what we are asking" of Iran and that "we got some answers." He also declined to discuss specifics, saying that "we will see in the future" whether the outcome was positive.
The talks were the first face-to-face discussions since 2009. Last year's talks in Vienna led to an announcement that Iran tentatively agreed to cede much of its enriched uranium in exchange for fuel for a medical research reactor, but the accord fell through.
Coming into the latest round of talks, Iranian officials said their nuclear program was not on the negotiating table. However, one official told the Post about "70-to-80 percent" of talks Monday morning focused on the nuclear program.
In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday talks about the Islamic Republic's nuclear program involving the five U.N. Security Council permanent members plus Germany would be "fruitful" if sanctions against the country were withdrawn.
Talks Monday opened with the Iranian delegation leader, Saeed Jalili, condemning the Nov. 29 assassination of physicist Majid Shahriari in a car bombing that injured his wife, and a similar attack that same day on another nuclear scientist, Fereydoon Abbasi, who was wounded, The New York Times reported. Iran blamed the West for both attacks.
Also condemning the killing was Catherine Ashton, the European Union's foreign affairs chief and principle negotiator for the other delegations.
Several countries had bilateral discussions with Iran. The United States was not one of them, the Times said. UPI
