Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers started on Friday a fresh round of nuclear talks in the Kazakh capital, Almaty.

Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers started on Friday a fresh round of nuclear talks in the Kazakh capital, Almaty.

“The plenary session just began this morning,” a Western official said on Friday.
The Iranian delegation is headed by Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Saeed Jalili while the EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, represents the P5+1 group -- Britain, China, France, Russia, the US and Germany.

Jalili was in defiant mood going into the new round of negotiations, indicating that Tehran had no intention of giving ground on the key concession demanded by the West.

He told the world powers on Thursday that Iran demanded an immediate recognition of his country's right to enrich uranium.

"We think that they can open up tomorrow's (Friday's) talks with one phrase -- and that is to accept Iran's right, particularly its right to enrich," Jalili said in a speech Thursday at an Almaty university.

"We hope that in Almaty, they do not repeat the bitter experience they have gone through in the 34 years of our revolution and that they make the right conclusion this spring," he said referring to the 1979 Islamic revolution that ousted the shah.

Jalili also appeared to downplay the chances of his one-on-one meeting with chief US negotiator Wendy Sherman -- talks Washington has been seeking for years.

"What our nation is expecting is for the US to correct its behavior, and not in just words, and tomorrow in Almaty they are in for another test," said Jalili.
Iran and the P5+1 have already held several rounds of talks the last round of which took place in Almaty on February 26-27.

The powers proposed in February talks that Iran shutter the Fordo reactor and in exchange receive small concessions that hold out the hope of greater ones if it made a bigger step.

But a senior US administration official said the proposal on the table now was "balanced and very fair."

"We hope Iran comes prepared and makes a concrete and substantive response" to a package proposed in February.
For her part, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she was going into the meeting with "cautious optimism".

Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in Madrid it would be “on the Iranian side to prove that its nuclear development program is for peaceful purposes".

Iran insists its program is for peaceful ends only insisting that is its right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) while the Zionist entity, which is believed to be the sole nuclear power in the Middle East with more than 200 nuclear heads, is not a signatory for this treaty.