(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration is ready to hold unprecedented, formal talks with Iran despite the fact that the regime’s leaders are adamant that the nuclear issue will not be up for negotiation.
 
On Sunday, one day after the White House insisted that the U.S. and its partners would “bring up” the nuclear program in the envisaged talks, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again made it clear that Iran considers the issue closed.
 
“We are ready to hold talks on international cooperation and ways to resolve ongoing economic and security problems in the world, as we believe that such issues cannot be settled without collective participation,” Ahmadinejad said at a meeting with Britain’s new ambassador, who was presenting his credentials in Tehran.
 
“We will never negotiate our inalienable right since it regards access to peaceful nuclear technology as its lawful and definite right,” he said, in comments reported by Iran’s Fars news agency.
 
Iran says its nuclear program is designed to generate electricity and denies Western allegations that it is seeking a weapons capability. Uranium enrichment is a key element of both processes.
 
With a late September deadline nearing for a response to a talks offer made last April by the permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany (P5+1), Iran last week presented those governments with a “package of proposals.”
 
In its early reaction, the State Department said Wednesday the important thing was how Iran’s proposals address concerns about its failure to comply with international obligations surrounding its nuclear activities.
 
The Iranian proposals do not, however, deal directly with the nuclear dispute and Tehran’s refusal to suspend enriching uranium, as demanded by U.N. Security Council resolutions.
 
The 1,238-word document does call for “complete disarmament” and for the prevention of the development and proliferation of nuclear and other non-conventional weapons
 
It also cites the “use of clean nuclear energy in agriculture, industry, and medicine and power generation.” Other issues touched on range from terrorism and piracy to the environment and poverty.
 
Although the document is silent on Iran’s nuclear program, by Friday, after consultations among P5+1 officials – and after Russia indicated again its opposition to tightening sanctions against Tehran – the parties said they were prepared to talk to the Iranians.
 
Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip Crowley told a briefing that the U.S. hoped the talks would take the form of “a full P-5+1 meeting at a senior level” and would see “what level of interlocutor” the Iranians would send.
 
Crowley said Iran in the document had indicated its willingness to enter into a dialogue.
 
“We are going to test that proposition,” he said. “And if Iran is willing to enter into serious negotiations, then they will find a willing participant in the United States and the other P-5+1 countries. If Iran dissembles in the future, as it has in the past, then we will draw conclusions from that.”
 
Crowley said that by year’s end, “we’ll be able to draw some conclusions as to how successful our engagement offer has been.”
 
On Saturday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs insisted the U.S. would discuss the nuclear issue.
 
“We’re not talking for talking’s sake,” he told reporters accompanying President Obama to Minnesota for a rally on health-care reform. “This may not have been a topic that they wanted to be brought up but I can assure that it’s a topic that we’ll bring up.”
 
Centrifuge supply continues to grow
 
The offer put to Iran last April was the third of its kind. The first, presented by the European Union in August 2005 and backed by the Bush administration, offered economic and political incentives in return for Iran abandoning all nuclear activity that could have a military function, while allowing it to use nuclear energy peacefully. Iran rejected the offer.
 
In June last year, the P5+1 presented another incentives proposal, but by a deadline three months later Iran had not responded.
 
As the months pass, Iran has been steadily increasing the number of centrifuges, machines that spin at super high speeds to enrich uranium.
 
In late 2007, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran had 2,952 centrifuges operating at a facility in central Iran called Natanz.
 
By February 1 this year, it had a total of 4537 centrifuges, 2,936 of which were operating.
 
Late last month the number had climbed to 4592 centrifuges operating, with a further 3,716 installed – a total of 8,308.
 
The U.S. envoy to the IAEA told the Vienna-based agency last week that Iran now either has, or is very close to having, “sufficient low-enriched uranium to produce one nuclear weapon, if the decision were made to further enrich it to weapons-grade.”
 
Were such a decision to be taken, experts have assessed, the process would take just 3-6 months to accomplish.
 
Ahmadinejad, who is due to attend the U.N. General Assembly session’s opening in New York next week, is not the only Iranian figure in recent days to rule out talks on the nuclear program.
 
Iran’s envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asqar Soltanieh, told the Fars news agency Tehran would conduct no further talks with the West over the issue.
 
“Tehran is ready for logical talks on various issues such as enabling all states to benefit from nuclear energy and preventing the spread of atomic weapons, but these talks cannot include discussions on Iran's legal nuclear activities,” he said.