Iran Balks at Nuclear Offer

Talks between Iran and six world powers about Iran's nuclear program yesterday yielded only an agreement to keep talking today. During the talks in Baghdad, negotiators offered Iran a package of benefits for freezing uranium enrichment, but the country's official news agency slammed the package as "outdated, not comprehensive, and unbalanced," reports the Washington Post. The talks between representatives from Iran and "P5+1" nations Russia, China, the US, Britain, France, and Germany lasted until after midnight.

The negotiators did not offer Iran immediate relief from sanctions, or offer to reconsider the European Union ban on oil imports from Iran set to take effect July 1. "The international community hasn't done something wrong here. We haven't created a suspicious nuclear weapons program that the world doesn't know the answers to—Iran has," a senior US official tells AP, describing the talks as the beginning of a long process. "They are the party who has acted to create concerns in the international community." (More Iranian nuclear program stories.)