EU Says Talks with Iran ‘Positive Enough’ to Reopen Nuclear Negotiations

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell holds a press conference after the meeting, Supporting the future of Syria and the region, at the European Council building in Brussels, Tuesday, May 10, 2022. (AP)
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell holds a press conference after the meeting, Supporting the future of Syria and the region, at the European Council building in Brussels, Tuesday, May 10, 2022. (AP)
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EU Says Talks with Iran ‘Positive Enough’ to Reopen Nuclear Negotiations

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell holds a press conference after the meeting, Supporting the future of Syria and the region, at the European Council building in Brussels, Tuesday, May 10, 2022. (AP)
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell holds a press conference after the meeting, Supporting the future of Syria and the region, at the European Council building in Brussels, Tuesday, May 10, 2022. (AP)

The EU's foreign policy chief said on Friday that he believed there had been enough progress during consultations between his envoy and Iranian officials in Tehran this week to relaunch nuclear negotiations after two months of deadlock.

Talks to revive Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers have been on hold since March, chiefly over Tehran's insistence that Washington remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps from the US list of designated terrorist organizations.

Speaking as talks coordinator Enrique Mora arrived back in Europe, Josep Borrell said Iran's response had been "positive enough" after Mora had delivered a message that things could not continue as they were.

"These things can not be resolved overnight," Borrell told reporters at a G7 foreign ministers meeting in northern Germany. "Let's say the negotiations were blocked and they have been de-blocked and that means there is the prospective of reaching a final agreement."

The broad outline of the deal that aims to revive the accord which restrains Iran's nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions was essentially agreed in March.

However, it has since been thrown into disarray after last-minute Russian demands and the dispute over the US Foreign Terrorist Organization list.

Western officials are largely losing hope that it can be resurrected, sources familiar with the matter have said, forcing them to weigh how to limit Iran's atomic program even as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has divided the big powers.

"It has gone better than expected - the negotiations were stalled, and now they have been reopened," Borrell said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said Mora’s trip had been "an opportunity to focus on initiatives to resolve the remaining issues".

"A good and reliable agreement is within reach if the United States makes a political decision and adheres to its commitments," he said.

A French diplomatic source said on Thursday he saw little chance of the United States agreeing to remove Iran's elite security force from its list of foreign terrorist organizations any time soon.

Mora has been in Tehran this week in what has been described as the last chance to salvage the 2015 accord, which then US President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018. Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia are also parties to the accord.

In a bizarre incident, Mora and his team were held at Frankfurt airport for several hours on return from the Iranian capital on Friday.

"We were kept separated. Refusal to give any explanation for what seems a violation of the Vienna Convention," he said on Twitter. Germany authorities did not immediately comment.

Iran's official IRNA news agency alleged, without evidence, that Israel was behind the incident.

"What has happened in Frankfurt has to do with opposition to the progress in the nuclear talks ... The Zionist lobby has influence in the German security apparatus," it said.



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."