The ongoing high-profile negotiations to seal the nuclear deal between Iran and the six major powers are "intense, complex and complicated" that could be open to varied legal and technical interpretations, but Tehran is primarily focused on transparency and clarity of purpose to limit any possible fallout from "disputes and wrong interpretations/understanding in the future, a senior negotiator was quoted as saying on Monday.
Hamid Baedinjad is of the opinion that the "details of the nuclear issue and elimination of the sanctions are immensely sensitive for all sides in the talks." The state news agency IRNA carries a report in which the negotiator acknowledges that "every word, term and sentence proposed by each party to the talks will carry huge sensitivity for each of the other sides.
Iran is in the final phase of the long and drawn out talks with the so-called P5+1 (five permanent members of the Un Security Council plus Germany) to reach a final agreement on Tehran's nuclear dispute. Last month both sides decided to compromise on the main issues of contention and resolve the differences, namely on the number of centrifuges Iran can have, the degree of uranium enrichment and finally the lifting of the economic and banking sanctions that have long hurt the Iranian economy.
The senior official to the talks added that "Under the difficult circumstances in the international negotiations, what indeed comes to help is accepting a degree of ambiguities in defining the terminologies guiding the agreement and the substance of the talks."
He made reference to the term "constructive ambiguity" in complex global negotiations, but stressed that such methods "are not of much help to us because our intention is that measure taken by both sides should, to the extent possible, be crystal clear, comprehensible and not subject to interpretations. "
*** Not a Political Task
Doubts, uncertainties and skepticism would make way for "disputes, wrong interpretations and/or false perceptions in the future," he warned. Pointing out that the devil lies in the detail, Baedinejad opined that "the technical and legal details of the nuclear dossier "are so complex that forging an agreement will not be an exclusively political decision by the negotiating parties. Each and every relevant technical and legal discussion has to be fine tuned with minute evaluation.
On the key point of legal authority of the agreement, he said, "At the end of the day the inherent nature of the deal is not legal, in the sense that it will not be sent to the parliaments of the signatory countries, because the document contains political and voluntary commitments and, by extension, negates binding legal obligations premised on internal legal duties."
Elaborating the point further, the senior negotiator added: "The US (Obama White House) is grappling with the opposition of the Congress (to the final comprehensive deal). The Europeans have a clear approach in that the deal, under any condition, would be decided in the EU Council of Ministers, and under no condition would it be sent to their respective legislatures for final approval. As for the China and Russia, in essence they simply do not have any specific or apparent commitment to the agreement that should or would need to be sent to their parliaments."
