The deputy parliament speaker said the Majlis has confidence in the negotiating team, who represent Iran in the talks with the major powers on a final settlement to the 12-year dispute over Tehran's nuclear program.
"We have often announced that we trust our negotiating team," Mohammad Reza Bahonar was quoted by IRNA as saying, adding, "This (confidence) has been shared and stressed by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution. However, it does not mean that we are not monitoring or pursuing the issue."
"After the nuclear negotiations are over, the Majlis is the first place the negotiators should appear before" to brief the lawmakers on the details of any agreement.
He made the remarks in a televised program broadcast live on state TV on Saturday.
Noting that the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee has been kept informed of the details of the talks, Bahonar said, "There is no point in the negotiations of which Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani is unaware and the negotiators have provided full explanations in the closed sessions of parliament."
Concerning the hotly-debated issue of the Iranian fact sheet, he said, "Any fact sheet released by the US or Iranian fact sheets, representing either side's own interpretation of the Lausanne agreement, does not create any binding legal obligations for the other side," adding, "The advantages and disadvantages of a written version of the Iranian fact sheet is still being weighed."
Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) issued a joint statement on April 2 in the Swiss city of Lausanne to announce an agreement on the outline of the final nuclear deal whose details are set to be finalized by a June-30 deadline.
The United States released a fact sheet on the provisions of the statement, which prompted serious criticism from some domestic opponents who invoked the contents of the US fact sheet to claim that the original text and the translated Persian version of the statement were inconsistent, accuse the Iranian negotiators of failure to have Iran's full rights recognized in the initial agreement and pressure them to release an Iranian fact sheet in writing to clarify the ambiguities and allay concerns over the issue.
The negotiating team has refused the demand, reasoning that the US fact sheet has been intended to satisfy a domestic audience and that it is feared a written Iranian fact sheet, disclosing further details of the outline agreement, would be subject to misuse by some foreigners, including Israel, to create disruption in the process of negotiations.
National Interests Come First
Warning against adopting a partisan approach and putting narrow partisan interests before national interests with regard to the nuclear issue, the secretary of the principlist Followers of the Line of Imam and Leader Front said, "The nuclear issue is beyond partisan considerations, a principle on which the lawmakers have reached unanimity. They recognize all the red lines."
The continuation of nuclear activities and nuclear research and development program and the continued operation of centrifuges are among the red lines of the Islamic system, Bahonar stressed.
Commenting on the recent passage by the US Senate of the so-called Iran Nuclear Review Act bill, giving Congress the right to review the prospective deal, he said, "We (the Majlis) are not after retaliation. We are avoiding sentimental decisions. We are acting sensibly."
"I reckon even the US Republicans want negotiations to come to fruition," he said, noting, "But they do not want Democrats to claim all the credit."
