Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry held decisive talks in the Austrian capital of Vienna at 17:15 local time on Sunday in hopes to reach a final agreement over Tehran’s nuclear program before the Monday deadline.
Speaking to the reporters from the balcony of Palais Coburg after the meeting with his US counterpart, Zarif assured that there was no plan to extend the talks beyond the several-times-extended Monday deadline. “No extension, we will finish hopefully. We need some more time. We need to do some more work,” the Iranian foreign minister said.
The US and European countries have extended the Geneva interim agreement to July 13 and hope to clinch an agreement by the end of the day.
The Iranian Deputy Foreign Ministers Seyed Abbas Araghchi and Majid Takht-Ravanchi, held several rounds of talks on Sunday with US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and Robert Maley of the US National Security Council to work on the text of a final deal and its annexes.
Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Ali Akbar Salehi also held a short meeting with the IAEA chief on Sunday. Noting that the technical negotiations had reached its conclusion, Salehi stressed that the Iranian negotiating team has been making its utmost efforts to ensure no decision would ever halt or hinder the Islamic Republic’s peaceful nuclear activities.
“Iran has accepted a number of limitations as it is only natural for any negotiation to be a kind of trade. But the efforts made by the Iranian team were so that the limitations would have no effect on the country’s peaceful nuclear progress,” said Salehi.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also said on Sunday that the marathon nuclear talks between Iran and the 5+1 group of countries are now in “the final phase.”
Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany have been holding intensive talks over the past 16 days in the Austrian capital to resolve the remaining issues and strike a landmark deal on Tehran’s nuclear program.