Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif yesterday began talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton in Oman to try to advance efforts to end a standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program, a witness said.
The discussions, aimed at curbing Iran’s sensitive uranium enrichment work in return for a gradual lifting of sanctions, are taking place just two weeks before a self-imposed Nov. 24 deadline for reaching a comprehensive deal.
Iranian official media also reported the start of the Muscat talks.
Photo: AFP
Western nations suspect Iran has covertly sought to develop the means to build nuclear weapons, but the Islamic Republic says its program is entirely for peaceful purposes.
The thorniest unresolved issues are Iran’s overall uranium enrichment capacity, the length of any long-term agreement and the pace at which international sanctions would be phased out, according to Western diplomats involved in the negotiations.
As Kerry arrived in Oman early yesterday, a senior US official said the three-way talks would be “an important meeting,” with the focus on making progress in order to meet the deadline.
US officials say major gaps still remain in the two sides’ negotiating position.
Kerry said last week that the US and its partners were not contemplating an extension of the Nov. 24 deadline, although he held out the possibility that negotiations could go beyond that date if major issues were agreed and there were only technical details to wrap up.
Speaking to Iranian state television on his arrival in Muscat on Saturday night, Zarif reiterated that sanctions imposed on Iran had brought “no result” for the West.
“We need to reach a solution based on mutual respect and cooperation. If the West is interested in reaching such a solution, there is possibility to find a solution and to reach an understanding before November 24,” he said.
A senior Iranian official close to the talks said the participants would discuss “the gaps that are still huge, Iran’s [uranium) enrichment capacity and timeframe of lifting sanctions.”
Yesterday’s meeting follows the revelation that US President Barack Obama reportedly wrote to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to push for a nuclear deal, saying that the Islamic republic and the West have shared regional interests.
However, the apparent reference to the fight against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq was played down by Kerry in Beijing on Saturday, with the US diplomat saying: “There is no linkage whatsoever” with the nuclear talks.
Domestic US politics now hang heavily over the talks, given the loss in midterm elections of the US Senate by Obama’s Democrats to the Republican Party, members of whom have consistently bridled at the White House’s negotiations with Iran.
If talks go sour in the coming weeks, it is thought the US Congress may respond with fresh sanctions on Iran. Even though Obama has the power to veto them, the prospect of new penalties could disrupt an already protracted process.
Zarif’s foreign ministry is also under pressure, with members of parliament criticizing the talks and threatening to scupper a deal if lawmakers themselves do not have a say in ratifying it.
Although officially supportive, hardliners in Tehran have often been ambivalent about the negotiations with the West which officially resumed in the fall last year after earlier secret talks with the US in Oman had set the wheels in motion.
On the plane to Muscat on Saturday, Zarif told reporters that Iran and the P5+1 have concentrated on “solutions rather than differences” since talks on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September.
“There is still a gap between the two parties on the size of the enrichment program and the mechanism for lifting sanctions,” the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying. “If the other party acts with good political will, we can reach an agreement.”
Additional reporting by AFP
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