Araqchi: Closer Than Ever to Agreement Ulyanov: Major Issues Remain

Date: 18 June 2021 - 23:09

News ID: ۹۱۴۳۶

VIENNA (Dispatches) – Talks in Vienna to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal have come closer than ever to an agreement, but essential issues remain to be negotiated, the top Iranian negotiator said on Thursday.
Iran and six world powers have been negotiating since April to work out steps for the U.S. to take. The United States withdrew in 2018 from the pact, under which Iran accepted curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for a removal of many foreign sanctions against it.
“We achieved good, tangible progress on the different issues .... we are closer than ever to an agreement but there are still essential issues under negotiations,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi was quoted as telling Al Jazeera television.
Araqchi said Iran’s presidential election on Friday would have no effect on the negotiations and the Iranian negotiating team will continue the talks regardless of domestic policy.
The sixth round of talks resumed on Saturday with the remaining parties to the deal - Iran, Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany and the European Union - meeting in the basement of a luxury hotel.
The U.S. delegation to the talks is based in a hotel across the street as Iran refuses face-to-face meetings.
Since former U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal and reimposed sanctions on Iran, Tehran has embarked on counter measures, including rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium.
“We want to make sure that what happened when Trump pulled out of the deal will not be repeated by any other American president in the future,” Araqchi told the pan-Arab satellite TV network.
Russia’s envoy to the talks, Mikhail Ulyanov, added a note of caution, saying progress had been made in the last few days but talks were tough.
“Some difficult and time-consuming topics still remain unresolved,” he said.
France’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday there were still significant disagreements.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price repeated the U.S. view that the Vienna talks had made progress since they began in April but that challenges remained, saying he could not put a “time frame” on when the current round might end.
He declined to say whether Araqchi’s assessment or Ulyanov’s was more accurate. “We have made progress between rounds one and six but ... I don’t want to be definitive in embracing one assessment over another,” he said.
Iran’s new president is expected to name his Cabinet by mid-August. Current President Hassan Rouhani’s term ends on Aug. 3.
Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif on Friday reiterated that the nuclear deal would not be renegotiated at all, saying all the sanctions imposed and re-imposed by the United States against Tehran should be lifted.
Zarif met EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Turkey. Zarif said the Iranian nation has a “bitter experience” of the U.S. violation of its commitments.