Iran and six major powers gave themselves until Tuesday next week to clinch a historic nuclear deal after a deadline to end marathon talks passed, with no breakthrough in sight.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who joined the meeting in Vienna on what was meant to be the final day of talks on Tuesday, said that after almost two years of trying, he still believed a deal to end the 13-year standoff was “within reach.”
The talks are “progressing in a positive direction. There remain questions, mostly regarding procedural issues rather than technical,” Lavrov said after meeting US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Photo: AP
“We have all reason to believe that results are within reach,” Lavrov told Russian television.
US President Barack Obama struck a less conciliatory tone in Washington on Tuesday, reiterating that he would not hesitate to “walk away” from a deal if the conditions were not satisfactory.
Obama said Tehran would have to agree to a “strong, rigorous verification mechanism” to seal an accord, which is meant to block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon in exchange for sanctions relief.
Earlier on Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif returned to Vienna following consultations in Tehran, a visit that had raised hopes he might be bringing instructions that would yield a breakthrough.
However, after Kerry met with Zarif for almost two hours following his return, the US Department of State said the P5+1 group of global powers — the US, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany — had agreed to extend the terms of an interim agreement until Tuesday next week.
A State Department official said that this did “not necessarily mean they will go until the [July] 7th or end on the 7th.”
Kerry has made no plans for when he might leave Vienna.
A member of the Iranian delegation said “the negotiations will continue beyond June 30 without any precise fixed date.”
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said a large number of sticking points had been resolved in the talks, but some remained.
“Some of these can be sorted out in the coming days if there are no excessive demands, and if one remains within the framework,” the ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.
After one-on-one talks, Kerry and Zarif were joined by their teams for a broader meeting, including with nuclear experts US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi.
The two Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni played a key role in brokering the outlines of a breakthrough accord in April in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Under the Lausanne framework, Iran agreed to substantially scale down its nuclear activities in order to make any attempt to develop nuclear weapons — an aim denied by Tehran — virtually impossible.
In return, painful sanctions that have suffocated the Iranian economy by choking its lifeblood oil exports and its ability to earn foreign currency would be progressively lifted.
However, turning the 505-word joint statement into a full-fledged, highly technical document of several dozen pages and about five annexes has proved hard work.
Contentious issues include the pace and timing of sanctions relief, the mechanism for their “snapback” and Iran’s future development of newer, faster centrifuges.
Another thorny topic is the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) watchdog, whose chief, Yukiya Amano, who has been closely involved in the talks.
Under the mooted deal, it will be up to the IAEA, which already keeps close tabs on Iran’s declared nuclear sites with between four and 10 inspectors on the ground on any given day, to verify that Iran really does reduce its capacities.
However, the P5+1 powers also want the IAEA to have wider inspection rights to verify any suspicious activity that might indicate work in secret on a nuclear bomb.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in