MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Iran requests meeting with Argentina at the coming UN General Assembly

Foreign minister Timerman is scheduled to meet his Iranian peer Ali Akbar Salehi

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi formally requested his Argentine counterpart Héctor Timerman for a meeting to be held next week at the United Nations General Assembly, the Ministry reported.

Argentina is expected to announce during the annual assembly it will freeze bilateral relations with Iran due to the lack of cooperation with the country's justice to clear up the 1994 AMIA terrorist attack.

Last year, the Argentine government had opened the dialogue with President Mahmaoud Ahmadinejad administration, and President Cristina Fernández had requested UN ambassador and current ambassador in the US, Jorge Argüello, to remain at the floor during the Iranian president's speech to the UN General Assembly.

It was the first time signals were exchanged between Teheran and Buenos Aires since President Cristina Fernandez reached the Executive branch.

As the dialogue failed, it was expected that this coming assembly Argentina's representative Mateo Estemé would leave the floor during Ahmadinejad's speech at the UN.

In related news it was announced that Foreign ministers and the chief negotiator for world powers will meet next week to try to figure out how to break an impasse in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, after talks on Tuesday yielded no sign of progress.

Six world powers, represented by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, have sought to persuade Iran to scale back its nuclear program through intensifying economic sanctions and diplomacy.

The powers fear Iran is developing a bomb, but Tehran says its program serves peaceful purposes only. In the latest talks, Ashton and Iran's chief negotiator Saeed Jalili held a meeting in Istanbul that was described as “useful and constructive.”

It was “an important opportunity to stress once again to Iran the urgent need to make progress,” according to Ashton's spokesman.

Though three rounds of talks since April have made little progress, neither side wants to break off negotiations because of concerns that this could lead to a new war.

Israel, believed to be the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, sees a possible Iranian nuclear bomb as a threat to its existence and has said it may resort to military means if diplomacy and sanctions fail.

Any deals are likely to be struck only during political talks between Iran and the six powers - the United States, Russia and China, plus three EU nations: France, Germany and Britain.