A senior Iranian member of parliament said on Tuesday that the Islamic Republic is ready to pay the price for safeguarding its nuclear rights, the official IRNA news agency reported.

 

Head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Majlis (parliament) Alaedd in Boroujerdi made the remarks in his meeting with Vice Speaker of Ghanaian Parliament Malek al-Hassan Yaccob.

 

Boroujerdi expressed hope that ongoing negotiations between Iran and Europe on the nuclear issue will lead to mutual understanding within the framework of the legal rights of Iranian nation.

 

His remarks came just one day after Iran held high-level nuclear talks with the European Union on the occasion of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting in Vienna.

 

Javad Vaedi, a deputy to Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, met earlier today with Robert Cooper, a top aide of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, which was intended to prepare for more talks between Larijani and Solana.

 

"Today's working session was good. I consider it kind of constructive ... (but) you should not expect kind of a huge miracle," Vaedi said.

 

"We made progress but one cannot expect miracles in this business," Cooper, together with Vaedi, told reporters at a press briefing following the meeting.

 

Larijani met with Solana in Madrid, Spain more than ten days ago, for talks that failed to break the deadlock over Tehran's nuclear program.

 

Although Larijani and Solana agreed to intensify their dialogue with another face-to-face in a meeting in two weeks' time, the date has yet to be set.

 

On March 24, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a new resolution, the second punitive one, with tougher sanctions to pressure Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities.

 

However, an IAEA report two weeks ago said that Iran continued to resist the UN Security Council ban on enrichment and instead was expanding its activities.

 

The US is using the IAEA meeting to gather support for a third round of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

 

(Xinhua News Agency June 13, 2007)