EU keen to restart nuclear talks with Iran

CORFU, Greece — The European Union wants to restart talks on Iran’s nuclear program, an official said Sunday, even as Tehran ratcheted up tensions with the bloc by detaining Iranian employees of the British Embassy.

Earlier this month, the EU’s 27 leaders unanimously condemned Teheran’s treatment of the hundreds of thousands of protesters who have rallied to demand a recount of presidential ballots. The street rallies have posed the greatest challenge to Iran’s ruling system since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Still, the EU also wants to leave the door open for the resumption of dialogue with Tehran on its nuclear program, and officials have sought to balance criticism of the crackdown with the need to prevent Iran from slipping further into isolation.

“We would like very much that soon we will have the possibility to restart multilateral talks with Iran on the important nuclear issues,” EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters in Corfu where he and EU foreign ministers were attending a meeting of the 56-nation Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The EU ministers will hold their own meeting to discuss Iran later Sunday.

In an indication of how much ties with the West have deteriorated in recent weeks, Iranian media reported Sunday that authorities had detained eight local employees of the British Embassy in Tehran for an alleged role in postelection protests.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who attended the talks in Corfu, said London is “deeply concerned” at the detentions, which he described as “harassment and intimidation of a kind that is quite unacceptable.”

His French counterpart Bernard Kouchner said he expected the EU foreign ministers to condemn Iran’s move.

Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb also said the EU would have to adopt a common approach on Iran, “because if we don’t come up with something common, we’ll look a little bit silly, to be honest.”

On Saturday, foreign ministers from Group of Eight industrialized countries who met in Italy deplored the violent crackdown on protesters in Iran.