Iran Talks Conclude with Cautious Optimism

Updated 6:50 p.m. EDT

Iran and six world powers ended a landmark meeting Thursday with an agreement to take a new stab at overcoming years of mistrust generated by Tehran's nuclear program and meet again this month for wide-ranging discussions on the two sides' concerns.

Adding to the optimism generated by the decision to hold follow-up talks was a rare bilateral meeting between the senior U.S. and Iranian delegates to the meeting. In addition, diplomats said Iran will open its newly disclosed nuclear plant to U.N. inspectors, probably within a few weeks.

In comments late Thursday, President Barack Obama on Thursday called the talks "a constructive beginning" but said that Iran must match its promises of cooperation with deeds.

Now that Iran has agreed to open it's the newly disclosed enrichment facility to international inspectors, it "must grant unfettered access" to those inspectors within two weeks, Mr. Obama said.

"Talk is no substitute for action," Mr. Obama said. "Our patience is not unlimited." He added said that if Iran follows through with concrete steps "there is a path to a better relationship" with the United States and the international community.

(Read more in CBSNews.com's Political Hotsheet blog.)

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking in Washington shortly after the talks ended, called the day productive but sounded a pragmatic note, as well.

"I will count it as a positive sign when it moves from gestures and engagements to actions and results," she said. "That's a necessary pathway and I think we're on it. We've always said we would engage. But we're not talking for the sake of talking," she said, adding, "Today's meeting opened the door, but let's see what happens."

At the same time that the talks were taking place in Switzerland, "Iran's foreign minister was at U.N. headquarters in New York, saying that diplomacy needs more time, that the talks are constructive, and that Iran wants a summit-level meeting with world leaders," reports CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk from the U.N.

But the foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, "Stonewalled any questions about Iran's non-compliance on nuclear issues and about the recent disputed elections," Falk reports.

U.S. Deputy State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Undersecretary of State William Burns used the meeting with chief Iranian delegate Saeed Jalili "to reiterate the international community's concerns about Iran's nuclear program.

"He addressed the need for Iran to take concrete and practical steps that are consistent with its international obligations and that will build international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its program.

"While the focus of the discussion was on Iran's nuclear program, both sides had a frank exchange on other issues, including human rights," said Wood.

The encounter appeared to be concrete proof of President Barack Obama's commitment to engage Iran directly on nuclear and other issues — a sharp break from the policy under the Bush administration.

More broadly, the meeting suggested that Obama was putting his concept of U.S. foreign policy into action, with its emphasis on negotiating even with the nations that are most hostile to the United States.

CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reported before the meeting that that the most tangible indicator of success would be a scheduled follow-up round of negotiations by the same parties.

Senior EU envoy Javier Solana confirmed that the seven nations did indeed plan to meet again.

And they appear to have got much more than that, including an unprecedented 45 minute one-on-one talk between the head of the U.S. delegation William Burns - and Iran's head nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, Palmer reports.

Solana also said Iran had pledged to open its newly revealed uranium enrichment plant to International Atomic Energy Agency inspection soon.

"The major breakthrough from the first diplomatic talks in decades between Iran and the U.S., is that the Iranian government will allow international inspectors into the newly discovered nuclear facility in Qom," Falk said.

Iran also agreed to a deal that would send most of its enriched uranium - already theoretically enough to make a bomb - out of the country for reprocessing in Russia and France. It would return to Iran in a different form for medical use, Palmer reports, with the whole process supervised by the IAEA.

Iran's disclosure of the new plant had threatened to poison the atmosphere of the talks, with the West saying Tehran only revealed it because it feared it would found out. Uranium enrichment can make both nuclear fuel and the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

Solana said Iran had pledged to "cooperate fully and immediately with the IAEA," and said he expected Tehran to invite agency inspectors looking for signs of covert nuclear weapons activity to visit "in the next couple of weeks."

At the United Nations, Mottaki confirmed the plant would be opened to inspectors.

"The letter from the IAEA to the Islamic Republic of Iran, in response to the information we have provided in this respect, and with regard to the new facilities that are under construction, indicate the fact that the agency has appreciated Iran's move and dialogue for arranging a visit by the IAEA official is under way," Mottaki said.

The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France — plus Germany hope to persuade Tehran to freeze the enrichment program.

CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk wrote in the World Watch blog Wednesday that China's seemingly endless need for oil - and their massive investment in Iran's oil infrastructure - may end up blocking any meaningful economic sanctions against Tehran.

Going into Thursday's talks, one of the top U.S. goals was to get the Iranians to commit to a second round of talks within a couple of weeks in order to keep the dialogue in a compact timeframe. The U.S. assumption was that if Iran was willing to engage seriously on the nuclear issue, a positive sign would be its agreement to have a second meeting shortly.

A senior Obama administration official told Palmer ahead of the talks that an eventual deal could include an Iranian enrichment program inside Iran, provided that it was well-monitored by international nuclear authorities.

Palmer, who has covered Iran extensively in recent years and traveled to the country on multiple occasions, says the Iranians genuinely seem interested in engaging the international community in these talks. "They don't want to be the ones to adjourn and walk out. They are too aware of pressure at home."