West’s commotion over Moscow talks an amateurish game:Iranian Majlis speaker

TEHRAN, June 6 (MNA) – The Iranian parliament speaker said that the commotion created by Western countries over the next round of talks between Iran and world powers is “an amateurish game.” Iran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) held a new round of talks in Baghdad on May 23 and 24 and agreed to continue their negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program in Moscow on June 18 and 19. MP Ali Larijani made the remarks in a speech during an open session of the Majlis on Tuesday in reference to news reports saying that the United States plans to tighten sanctions against Iran if the upcoming negotiations in Moscow produce no results. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Monday that Israel and the U.S. are discussing a new raft of sanctions that could be imposed on Iran if the Moscow talks fail. In an interview with the daily, U.S. Treasury Undersecretary David Cohen said that the sanctions would be imposed if the talks in Russia failed to halt Iran’s nuclear program. “If we don’t get a breakthrough in Moscow there is no question we will continue to ratchet up the pressure,” Cohen, who coordinates U.S. sanctions policy against Iran, said. Larijani said, “Creating a commotion in this relation by the Westerners and saying that the Moscow talks will be the deadline and that the Americans have prepared another resolution are nothing but an amateurish game.” “If you want to hold talks to resolve the issue, why have you determined the results of the negotiations in advance?” “On the one hand you send messages, but on the other hand you create a political brouhaha. It is a political retrogression for the United States,” he said. Larijani added that “this diplomatic frivolity” is of no account to the Islamic Republic.