Trust-Building Mainly Rests with US, Says Top Diplomat
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The US should win the Iranian nation’s trust, an Iranian deputy foreign minister and top negotiator in nuclear talks noted, adding that Washington now has primary responsibility in the trust-building process.
“The main burden of trust-building rests on the US government’s shoulders,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Seyed Abbas Araqchi said in an interview with the Iranian News Network on Saturday.
Araqchi, who also had a leading role in the nuclear negotiations in a recent round of nuclear talks between Iran and the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) in the Swiss city of Geneva on October 15-16, explained that a negative image of US “colonialist and imperialist” policies has been seared in the psyche of the Iranian nation.
“The US should make a big effort to win the Iranian people’s trust, because the US is blamed for the whole host of existing problems.”
“We regard the entire American government’s moves pessimistically,” he added, and urged the White House to make sure it wants to “correct policies in practice and lift the cruel sanction” against Iran, in order to build trust.
In recent years the western governments have imposed new sanctions on Iran on the pretext that the country may be trying to develop a nuclear weapon capacity under the guise of its civilian nuclear program, an allegation strongly dismissed by Iran which states that it needs nuclear energy for generating electricity and other purely peaceful purposes.
Many of the sanctions predate the nuclear dispute and some of them are as old as the Islamic system in Iran, and the US has always found pretexts to tighten the existing sanctions and impose new ones.
