Solana to meet Iran’s Larijani next week

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana announced that much-delayed talks with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani will take place next week. A meeting had been expected in the margins of the United Nations’ General Assembly which kicked off in New York on Tuesday but Larijani failed to appear in the United States. The talks are now expected to take place in a European capital next week, although the exact date was not clear at the time of going to press.

True to form, French presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy had an electrifying impact in Brussels in early September when he outlined his vision for ending the impasse on the EU constitution. The clarity of his plan for a mini-treaty containing the key institutional innovations of the constitution - to be ratified by 2008 under the French presidency - won him admiration even from those members of his audience opposed to his preference for intergovernmental co-operation over community action.