AP:

GENEVA (AP) — The U.S. and five other world powers began high-stakes talks Thursday with Iran to demand a freeze of its nuclear activities, with a senior U.S. official saying Washington is open to rare one-on-one talks with Iranian diplomats.
The EU’s Javier Solana, who is formally heading the one-day negotiations with chief Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili, was upbeat before the start of the talks in an 18th century villa in Geneva. The U.S. official briefed reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the private nature of the talks.
A bilateral meeting with Iran would reflect Washington’s determination to get results from the meeting.
The fact that the meeting is taking place at all offers some hope, reflecting both sides’ desire to talk, despite a spike in tensions over last week’s revelations by Iran that it had been secretly building a new uranium enrichment plant.
Yet Tehran’s acknowledgment that it had kept silent on the plant — which can make both nuclear fuel and fissile warhead cores — has left the Western powers with only modest expectations about the success of the talks.
While the West fears that Iran’s nuclear program aims to make a bomb, Iran insists the program is strictly for peaceful use and has refused to negotiate any limits on it.