Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: During the time the Secretary of the Iranian National Security Council, Mr Larijani, spent in Moscow he had discussions with his colleague, Russian Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov, and with myself, the Foreign Minister. And today Mr Larijani was received by President Putin. During this conversation as well as during other contacts they discussed the situation with respect to Iran’s nuclear programme in detail, including in light of the work the UN Security Council has carried out on this issue.
The Russian party confirmed our position of principle concerning the need to resolve this problem based on the strong basis of international law, taking into account both the rights and responsibilities of all the participants in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and with the support of professional, unbiased, apolitical evaluations by IAEA experts.
We reached an agreement about how our contacts will continue and we shall certainly achieve our overall aim, namely renewing the six-party negotiations. In the next few days we will continue to be in contact with the members of the group of six that proposed corresponding ideas to Iran to act as a basis for such talks. Iran has responded to these proposals. We think that in the presence of good will there is the possibility to find a mutually acceptable basis for renewing negotiations based on the proposals put forward by the group of six and taking into account Iran’s responses. We will work in this direction.