Referring to his meeting with Iran's chief negotiator to the Vienna talks Ali Bagheri Kani, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the Vienna-based international organizations Mikhail Ulyanov in a tweet on Friday said that he held a "very useful" meeting.
"Close coordination between our two delegations is one of the prerequisites of successful continuation and completion of negotiations on restoration of #JCPOA and #sanctions lifting," he added.
In an earlier tweet, Ulyanov said Russia rejects “artificial deadlines” set by Western parties after their meeting with the US.
“The Western colleagues, as they do it publicly, underlined the need to finalize negotiations ASAP. Russia shares the sense of urgency but is against artificial deadlines,” Ulyanov wrote.
The negotiations are taking place between Iran, and the remaining parties to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), namely Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany and the EU.
During the previous round of the talks, the first under Iran’s new President Ebrahim Raeisi, Iran presented new proposals at the negotiating table to help the talks move forward and later criticized the European signatories of the JCPOA for failing to follow suit and remaining passive.
In withdrawing from the deal in 2018, the Trump administration reinstated harsh economic sanctions on Iran.
Iran says the US sanctions need to be removed in a verifiable manner. It also says Washington should provide guarantees that it will not pull out again.
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