Tehran--Talks between Iran and world powers aimed at finalising a deal over Tehran's nuclear programme could go beyond a June 30 deadline, a senior Iranian negotiator said Wednesday.
With the issue of access to military sites emerging as a potential deal-breaker, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the work of his nuclear negotiators after they came under heavy criticism from the conservative camp in parliament.
The two sides signed a framework agreement on April 2 and aim to seal a final deal by the end of June to prevent Iran from developing an atomic bomb, in exchange for an easing of crippling economic sanctions.
But Iranian negotiator Abbas Araghchi, quoted by state news agency IRNA, said the two sides were "not bound by the schedule".
He added: "We are not at the point where we can say that negotiations will be completed quickly -- they will continue until the deadline and could continue beyond that."
Araghchi has been attending a fresh round of talks between Iranian representatives and officials from the P5+1 group -- Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States plus Germany -- which got under way in Vienna on Tuesday.
"We are trying to have a good agreement with all the details meeting our expectations," Araghchi said, describing the efforts to draw up a final text as "hard work".
On Monday, deputy oil minister Amirhossein Zamani-Nia was quoted as saying that 20 pages of the text had been written "but there are still disagreements and 30 percent of the work remains to be done."
AFP
