EU's Solana hopes Iran nuclear talks will resume soon

(CORFU) - EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana expressed hope Sunday that nuclear talks with Iran will resume, despite unrest over a disputed presidential election.

"We would like very much that soon we will have the possibility to restart multilateral talks with Iran on important nuclear issues," he told reporters at a meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Solana, who will hold talks on Iran with EU foreign ministers later Sunday on the Greek island of Corfu, has been negotiating on behalf of major world powers to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment.

The Europeans have been running the "talks about talks" since 2006, when Solana made a first offer to Iran of political and economic incentives in exchange for an end to enrichment.

Enrichment is a process for powering a nuclear reactor, but at highly refined levels the uranium can be used to build the core of an atom bomb, which many countries fear the Islamic Republic is trying to covertly develop.

Iran, which is labouring under three sets of UN sanctions, has refused to sit down at the negotiating table if it has to suspend uranium enrichment even before the talks begin.

On the post-election protests, Solana underlined: "We don't want to interfere in an internal issue."

"But we want to say what we think about the behaviour on issues like dealing with demonstrations, arrests, crackdowns, all these things," he said.

In informal talks here, the EU ministers were expected to try to coordinate their embassies in Tehran, particularly on how to handle visa requests from Iranian opposition activists.

"We need to speak in a single voice on the issue of visa requests to one country," Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Saturday.

Rome's embassy has issued visas to Iranian nationals, but entry is restricted to Italy.

In Tehran Sunday, the streets appeared quiet, with the authorities warning they would suppress any further protests over the vote that triggered the worst unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The international community continues to voice alarm the violent crackdown on the opposition in the election aftermath, but Iran has hit back, accusing Western nations particularly the United States and European Union of meddling.

Facing its biggest threat in 30 years, the Islamic regime has sought to quell the election disquiet by ordering a partial vote recount.