katherine ashton, the eu foreign policy chief said she wants a sustained process of constructive dialog with iran in her letter back to jaleel i. ashton first sent a letter last october. it took iran until february to respond and then finally in march after the meeting between obama and netanyahu ashton said, yes, the p-5 plus one would be willing to meet. she wants a sustained process of constructive dialog which means not a one-shot deal, not one, two-day session in istanbul and nothing after that. we do need to see that there are more meetings schedule and had they begin to get into the nitty-gritty of the nuclear program and not just talking about principles and that iran is not simply presenting a litany of grievances against the west which is what it has done in the past. a couple more things about iranian internal politics. they had parliamentary elections march 2nd. they resident what we would call free or fair, you but the iranian government declared them a great success. it declared that 64% of the iranians participate participated which is undoubtedly an inflated figure and t

this 45-minute debate from france includes opening remarks from katherine ashton. we will now start debating the next point on the situation in syria. i would now like to give the floor again to the high representative of the eu. >> mr. president, thank you very much. honorable members, we are all absolutely appalled by the horrendous levels of violence witnessed in syria. regime forces have bombarded with no regard for civilians. violence is not spared for children. everything that the violence and killings should stop and everyone is extremely worried by the potential for further millization and escalation of the conflict. the increased violence we saw leading to the cease fire deadline was totally unacceptable and reports about shelling in the city of homs and civilians killed are extremely disturbing. violence has e baited, but it's not enough. once again, i urge in the strongest possible terms that the us is sags of violence is real and the plan is implemented immediately and in its entirety. honorable members will know how fragile and unstable the situation r

katherine ashton, the eu foreign policy chief, says she wants a sustained process of dialogue going on. this was in her letter. the way it work ed is that ashtn first sent a letter to the iranians last october. it took iran until february to respond. and then finally in march, after the meeting between obama and netanyahu, ashton said yes, the p5 plus 1 would be willing to meet. she wants constructive dialogue, not a one-shot deal, not one two-day session in istanbul and nothing after that. so, we do have to see that there are more meetings scheduled and they begin to get into the nitty gritty of the nuclear program and not just talking about principles, that iran is not just presenting its lit any of grievan grievances against the west, which it has done in the past. a couple of more things in iranian politics, which i think is useful. they were not what we would call free or fair, but the iranian government declared them a great success. it declared that 64% of the irani iranians had participated, which is undoubtedly an inflated figure. there's a joke going around that 80% of irania

the day after the meeting of the two leaders katherine ashton, who is the foreign policy representative for the european union sent a letter to the iranian negotiator on the nuclear issue to say that she had accepted talks which he had proposed earlier . . there have been several side posts along the way but not to go from the whole history, but what ring suspects to what is happening now in october 2009, there is a meeting at which the two sides agreed, where iran would ship out most of the enriched uranium they had made in return for getting fuel for a research reactor in tehran which make medical isotopes and the idea behind that and the idea behind these talks in general is that would have be confidence building measure. iran would have shipped out most of the enriched uranium which makes them less able to break out a new weapon. at the same time they have gotten de facto recognition of continuing their enrichment and that would set the stage for serious talks. that deal fell apart. then there were two meetings in geneva, in december of 2010 and in istanbul in january 2011, at which