As World Leaders Speak at United Nations, Iran Sends More Friendly Signals

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/world/united-nations-general-assembly.html

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As world leaders began speaking at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Iran extended its optimistic pronouncements on possible progress over the country’s nuclear dispute, with the new foreign minister proclaiming in a Twitter message that “we have a historic opportunity.”

The Twitter message by the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, was sent a day after he agreed to meet later this week at the United Nations with representatives of the so-called Five-plus-One powers negotiating with Iran over the dispute. Those representatives include Secretary of State John Kerry, and a meeting with Mr. Zarif would be one of the highest-level meetings between the United States and Iran in more than three decades of estrangement.

The Five-plus-One powers are the five members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany.

Mr. Zarif, who was educated in the United States, posted his Twitter message a few hours before the scheduled United Nations speech by President Obama, who has exchanged letters with the new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, suggesting that both men were ready to seek a compromise on the nuclear issue.

Mr. Zarif, who has made the nuclear dispute a signature issue for Iran this year, held more than a dozen meetings at the United Nations on Monday. Mr. Rouhani was to deliver his country’s address to the General Assembly late Tuesday afternoon.

Both men have emphasized their wish to make progress on the nuclear issue, which has left Iran in deep economic difficulties because of severe Western sanctions. They have also emphasized the urgency of reaching an understanding quickly, lest they be discredited by hard-line elements in the Iranian government.

“We have a historic opportunity to resolve the nuclear issue,” Mr. Zarif said Tuesday morning in a message on his new Twitter account. “5+1 needs to adjust its posture commensurate with the new Iranian approach.”

Iran has asserted that its program of uranium enrichment is meant for peaceful purposes. The Western countries and Israel suspect it is meant to achieve the ability to make nuclear weapons.