admin
VIENNA—Talks between Iran and six major powers pushed into their 17th day yesterday with top Iranian officials saying the talks could go on for days. European officials suggested over the weekend that yesterday was a make-or-break day for the nuclear talks, as both sides said only a final few issues remained to be resolved. But US diplomats said they wouldn’t be pressured to walk away from talks as long as progress was being made.
With the current deadline falling at midnight Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was quoted by Iran’s state-run media as saying he didn’t want to extend the talks. But, he said, Iran could “continue as long as necessary.”
“The talks have reached the last breathtaking moments. There are still some problems. We can’t say we have reached the deal until they are resolved,” said Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, according to Iran’s official state news agency IRNA. “I don’t promise tonight or tomorrow night. But there is room for hope.”
Foreign ministers of the six major powers negotiating with Iran—the US, the UK, Russia, China, France and Germany—met late Monday morning and were joined for the first time in recent days by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Wang exhorted both sides to compromise, saying no agreement could be perfect.
A final nuclear deal aims to block Iran’s near-term path to construction of a nuclear weapon in exchange for lifting international sanctions over time.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke to reporters early Monday afternoon but offered no assessment on the progress of talks. They only delivered a statement about the new bailout deal for Greece that was struck overnight in Brussels.
Zarif, US Secretary of State John Kerry and European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who chairs the so-called P5+1 group of major world powers, began meeting shortly before 2PM, local time.
Since Kerry arrived in Vienna on June 26 to try to seal a nuclear agreement, the deadline for the talks has been extended from June 30 to July 7 and then again to July 10 and July 13.
If no deal is reached by yesterday night, the two sides must again agree to extend the terms of their November 2013 interim nuclear deal or risk seeing two years of high-stakes diplomacy unravel. That accord offered modest sanctions relief for Iran in exchange for Tehran freezing parts of its nuclear programme.
Among the final issues to be resolved are disagreements about the timing and sequencing of sanctions relief for Iran and the continuation of a ban on sales of arms and ballistic-missile parts to Iran. Officials have also been toiling over the text of a new UN Security Council resolution that would keep some restrictions on Iran and outline steps the country would take to detail its past nuclear activities. — The Wall Street Journal.
Online Reporter