Senior negotiators from Iran and the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) ended their first round of talks in Istanbul, Turkey./World News

The first round of talks ended in “positive atmosphere” and the next round is scheduled to be resumed later toady.

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Saeed Jalili heads Iranian delegation in Istanbul.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and delegations from the US, France, Britain, China, Russia and Germany are present in the talks.

The previous round of talks was held in the Swiss city of Geneva on December 6-7.

During Geneva talks, the two sides agreed at the end of their third session to hold the next round of talks in Istanbul late in January.

Diplomatic sources said after the talks that the current round of negotiations will be aimed at “talks for cooperation” and “finding common grounds for cooperation”.

Iran’s chief negotiator Saeed Jalili underlined during a press conference after the end of the Geneva talks that “our agreement was one sentence which was concluded by Mrs. Ashton and we accepted it after all the 6 countries (of the Group 5+1) approved it, and that sentence is ‘talks for cooperation over common points in January in Istanbul'”.

“Anything beyond this sentence is against our agreement and this sentence itself was not my conclusion, rather it was the conclusion made by Mrs. Ashton, which was first approved by the 6 countries and then by us.”

“We will by no means allow the rights of the Iranian nation to become the agenda of negotiations,” the Iranian top negotiator reiterated.

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