RIO DE JANEIRO. July 7 (Interfax) - Moscow is ready to provide its services to bring the positions of the various parties on the situation around Iran closer, if there is a striving for this, primarily from Tehran itself, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday.
"Of course, if the parties are comfortable with Russia assisting to bring their positions closer, primarily, the United States now wants to resume dialogue with Iran, while Oman assisted in this, and a number of other Arab states of the Persian Gulf helped. But let's not forget that the very Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was endorsed, for which the international community thanked all parties, and which was then abolished, was drafted, among other things, with the participation of Europeans, Americans, Russia, and China. Thus, if the main player, which is Tehran, wants this, it will be no problem for us," he said at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro.
Lavrov also said that Russia has technological capabilities, and that Moscow "stands ready to provide them, taking excess highly enriched uranium for processing in Russia and returning energy-enriched uranium to Iran for its nuclear energy facilities."
"You are asking in what format negotiations between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency may resume? Well, this is the format, if we are talking about these two parties," Lavrov said in reply to a question as to whether Moscow is ready to play a mediating role in resuming contacts between Iran and the IAEA.
"I got the impression that here, first of all, the IAEA leadership should show responsibility for the assessments that it publishes, that it published in the past, and that were presented by the IAEA Board of Governors literally a few days before the start of aggression [against Iran]," Lavrov said.