Iran Nuclear Offer Isn’t Enough to Delay EU Oil Embargo
By Jonathan Tirone, Ilya Arkhipov and Henry Meyer - 2012-06-18T15:29:10Z
Iran’s signal of willingness to compromise over the most contentious part of its nuclear program failed to convince the European Union to reconsider a pending embargo on oil shipments from the Persian Gulf country.
Diplomats adjourned in Moscow after five hours of meetings and will reconvene talks tomorrow over Iran’s atomic work that officials say probably won’t yield enough progress to end the threat of military strikes. Chinese, French, German, Russian, British and U.S. negotiators met with their Iranian counterparts behind tight security at a hotel near Russia’s Foreign Ministry.
“All the sanctions that are supposed to come into force on July 1 will come into force on July 1,” EU foreign-policy spokesman Michael Mann said in an interview today in the Russian capital. “We’ve taken a political decision that this is an important measure to put pressure on the Iranian regime.”
The so-called P5+1 group wants Iran to suspend production of uranium enriched to 20 percent, while the Islamic republic is pressing for relief from sanctions set to tighten when the EU oil embargo kicks in. European insurers and shipping companies carrying Iranian crude to other parts of the world will be affected by the embargo and shouldn’t expect relief, Mann said.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-17/iran-atomic-deal-prospects-dim-as-elections-embargo-loom.html
