European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton expressed hope on Friday that the next round of talks between Iran and world powers would produce “concrete” results.

Tehran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) held a new round of talks in Istanbul on April 14 and will meet again in Baghdad on May 23.

“My ambition is that we come away with the beginning of the end of the nuclear weapons program in Iran,” Ashton said at a press conference, according to The Tehran Times. “I hope we’ll see the beginnings of success.”

Ashton added that she would approach the talks as a “serious set of discussions that can lead to concrete results,” said the report.

After the first round of talks in April, Ashton said they had been constructive. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has expressed hope that Tehran´s next round of talks with the six powers will mark “the beginning of the end of the nuclear issue.

Ashton’s remarks come on the same day in which an Iranian opposition group released a report which says that the Islamic Republic is continuing to try and develop nuclear weapons while holding talks with Western powers.

The report was released by Mujahedeen Khalq, the same group that first blew the whistle on Iran’s secret nuclear programs in 2002. The group claims its newest report is based on sources within the Iranian military and the Revolutionary Guards. The report exposes a list of nuclear scientists who are working on developing nuclear weapons, and even the phone numbers of some of them.

Earlier this week, new satellite photographs published by a Washington think tank suggested that Iran has been cleansing the Parchin military.

The Institute for Science and International Security said in an online posting that the imagery showed unidentified items lined up outside the chamber, possibly related to cleaning, and what appeared to be a stream of water from or near the chamber. (IsraelNationalNews © 2012 05/12/12)