TEHRAN, Feb. 16 (MNA) – French President Emmanuel Macron and China's President Xi Jinping both agreed on Wednesday on the need to step up their joint efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, said a statement from Macron's office on Wednesday.

Concurrent with the resumption of Vienna talks last Tuesday, Wang Qun, China's representative to the Vienna-based International Organizations and envoy in Vienna talks had said that negotiating parties should listen more to Iran's views on the final package and pay due attention to the legitimate rights and logical demands of Iran.

He also had called on all negotiating parties to consider the salient progresses that have been made with difficulty and to focus on resolving remaining issues including removal of anti-Iranian sanctions and provision of economic guarantees in order to reach a greater consensus in line with speeding up achieving agreement.

From the outset, China, despite the urgency of advancing Vienna talks, opposed the imposition of artificial deadlines, saying that a statement alone was not enough and that removing anti-Iranian sanctions should be a tangible process.

Iran had previously stated that it has negotiated JCPOA once and forever and that the key to the US returning to 2015 Iran nuclear deal is the complete removal of all sanctions and a guarantee that it will not breach its promise.

Iran and major world powers are currently in Vienna to remove anti-Iranian sanctions imposed by former US President Donald Trump.

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