TEHRAN - Supreme National Security Council Secretary Saeed Jalili categorically condemned the recent terrorist attacks on Iranian scientists at the beginning of the new round of talks between Iran and the 5+1 group in Geneva on Monday.

Iran and the 5+1 group (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany) resumed their talks on Monday after a 15-month hiatus.
In this round of the talks, which will run for two days, Jalili is representing Iran while EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is representing the countries of the 5+1 group.
On November 29, two prominent physicists were targeted by terrorists in two separate bombings. Professor Majid Shahriari was killed and Professor Fereydoun Abbasi Davani was injured in the attacks. The two academics were both on their way to work at Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran when they were attacked. The police say that in both incidents, terrorists riding motorcycles attached magnetic bombs to the physicists’ cars.
Addressing Ashton, Jalili said, “So far, Iran has lost 13,000 of its citizens in terrorist attacks carried out by Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) members, who are supported by the West, and the same trend is repeating now.”
However, the recent cases are different than the previous incidents because one of these scientists was named in the UN Security Council resolution and the other one was one of the most prominent Iranian nuclear scientists, Jalili stated.
Fereydoon Abbasi Davani, who was injured in the second bomb attack, was named in UN Security Council Resolution 1747, which was adopted in March 2007.
Commenting on Shahriari’s assassination, Jalili said, “A few weeks before the assassination, MI6 chief John Sawers had made explicit remarks about conducting intelligence operations in Iran.”
“Stopping nuclear proliferation cannot be addressed purely by conventional diplomacy. We need intelligence-led operations to make it more difficult for countries like Iran to develop nuclear weapons,” Sawers said.
“These statements have a very specific meaning,” Jalili stated.
“And after the assassination, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s official website published an article saying that the assassination was carried out with the aim of dealing a blow to Iran’s nuclear program and preventing it from becoming a nuclear state,” he said.
“Why has the world remained silent about the terrorist act, despite the clear admission of certain countries on their involvement in it? Why did the 5+1 group not condemn this action?”
Jalili also called on the West to give explanations about the terrorist attacks that targeted the two Iranian scientists.
Dialogue between Iran and the 5+1 group has been stalled since October 2009.
At the talks in Geneva, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov is representing Russia and U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns is the representative of the United States.
Jalili is accompanied by deputy SNSC secretaries Ali Bagheri and Abolfazl Zohrevand, Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal Affairs Hamidreza Askari, and Deputy Foreign Minister for European Affairs Ali Ahani.
Iran had previously announced that the negotiations must be based on Jalili’s letter to Ashton dated July 6.
In his letter, Jalili said that while Iran was still ready to resume talks with the 5+1 group, a number of conditions had to be met first.
Jalili had stated that the direction of the talks had to be made clear, and all parties had to prove their commitment to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The main bone of contention between Tehran and the West is Iran’s uranium enrichment program.
Iran says all its nuclear activities are totally peaceful, and, as an IAEA member and an NPT signatory, it has the legal right to produce nuclear fuel for its research reactors and nuclear power plants