Iran faced Western pressure on Saturday to make concessions over its atomic activities after it and six world powers failed to meet yesterday’s deadline for a deal to end the decade-old dispute, but agreed to keep talking.
The countries agreed to extend the high-stakes negotiations by four months, and let Iran access another US$2.8 billion of its cash frozen abroad during that period, though most sanctions on the Islamic Republic stayed in place.
Germany — one of the major powers trying to persuade Iran to curb its nuclear program — said that the extended talks might be the last chance for a long time to reach a peaceful solution.
Photo: Reuters
Echoing the views of other envoys, a Western diplomat said there had been some progress during nearly three weeks of marathon discussions in Vienna’s 19th century Coburg palace and that gaps in positions were not “unbridgeable.”
However, the senior diplomat added: “We cannot accept that Iran stays at current levels of enrichment.”
The six powers want Iran to significantly scale back its uranium enrichment program to make sure it cannot produce nuclear bombs. Iran says the program is entirely peaceful and wants sanctions that have severely damaged its oil-dependent economy to be lifted as soon as possible.
After years of rising tension between Iran and the West and fears of a new Middle East war, last year’s election of a pragmatist, Hassan Rouhani, as Iran’s president led to a thaw in ties that resulted in the current nuclear negotiations.
The announcement to give diplomacy until Nov. 24 came in the early hours of Saturday, a day before the deadline that Iran, the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China had earlier set for an agreement.
“These few months until November could be the last and best chance for a long time to end the nuclear argument peacefully,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.
“Iran must show it is willing to dispel all doubts about the peaceful nature of its nuclear program,” he added.
Under the terms of the extension of the negotiations, Iran will be able to access during this time a relatively small portion of an estimated more than US$100 billion held abroad, in return for limits to its nuclear program
It prolongs — with some adjustments — an interim deal hammered out in Geneva last year, under which Iran halted its most controversial nuclear work in exchange for some easing of sanctions. The six-month deal — which allowed Iran to receive US$4.2 billion — was designed to create time and space for the negotiation of a permanent agreement.
US officials stressed that most sanctions against Iran would remain in place for now.
“Iran will not get any more money during these four months than it did during the last six months, and the vast majority of its frozen oil revenues will remain inaccessible ... We will continue to vigorously enforce the sanctions that remain in place,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said.
It remains uncertain whether four more months of talks will yield a final deal, since major underlying differences remain after six rounds of meetings since February.
“We are definitely convinced it’s doable; it’s a question of political will,” the senior Western diplomat said. “I think they [Iran] really want to get this done.”
In exchange for the US$2.8 billion, Kerry said, Iran agreed to take several steps, including to keep neutralizing its most sensitive uranium stocks — uranium that has been enriched to a level of 20 percent purity — by converting it to fuel for a research reactor in Tehran used to make medical isotopes.
French Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development Laurent Fabius told reporters in Cairo that major disagreements remained, though some had been resolved.
“If we had thought there was no potential for a deal, we would have stopped immediately,” he said.
Some members of the US Congress are eager to impose new and tougher sanctions on Iran. US officials said on Saturday they would continue to oppose new sanctions as long as the negotiations were underway, but would drop their opposition if the talks collapsed.
“We understand Congress’ desire to hold Iran’s feet to the fire,” one of them said.
Iran says it would be willing to delay development of an industrial uranium enrichment program for up to seven years and to keep the 19,000 centrifuges it has installed so far for this purpose, but Washington says this is still too many.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton — who leads the talks for the powers — and Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a joint statement that the talks would resume in the coming weeks.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value, but they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the US Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than US$500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that ends next month. What makes the dime depicting former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San Francisco, one of just two
RSS