Saudi Arabia Frustrated With Nuclear Talks
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister has called the nuclear negotiations with Iran a “waste of time” and he urged world powers to put a time limit on them.
Al-Arabiya reports that Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Monday: “We really feel that Iran is trying to waste the time and energy of everybody.”
The Saudi Foreign Minister’s statement came during a joint ministerial meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the European Union in Luxembourg.
Al-Arabiya quoted Prince al-Faisal as saying: “We had a discussion on Iran and we are in agreement about the negotiation that has to be done with Iran. To give peace a chance and give a political solution a chance. From past experience, we are suspicious that the negotiations are seen as a way to gain time by Iran rather than leading to a concrete conclusion. But we were very much assured by lady [the EU’s Catherine] Ashton that the discussions were technical in view. And if you put this technical negotiation with a time limit, this would have to force Iran to say its real policy and how it’s going to implement it.”
World powers suspect that Iran may be building nuclear weapons, but Iran denies the allegations and insists that its nuclear program is peaceful. In the past three months, there have been three meetings to resolve the disputes over Iran’s nuclear activities. EU sanctions on Iranian oil take effect on July 1, aimed at making Iran more flexible in the negotiations.
