Washington--US Secretary of State John Kerry is set to launch a final high-stakes diplomatic push to seal a ground-breaking nuclear deal with Iran, as some officials warned Wednesday the negotiations may go beyond a June 30 deadline.
Kerry will on Saturday once again huddle with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif in Geneva, after weeks of behind-the-scenes complex technical discussions in Vienna seeking to narrow the gaps on what would be an unprecedented deal on curtailing Iran's nuclear program.
Iran and the six global powers leading the talks -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- laid down a framework to guide the final accord in eight days of marathon late-night talks in Lausanne in early April.
Kerry and his team will now return to Europe for what is expected to be a final series of meetings with Zarif as the clock ticks down to June 30 and a possible deal putting a nuclear bomb out of Iran's reach.
The deal will include Iran dramatically scaling back its nuclear activities and submitting those that remain to what US President Barack Obama has called the "most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime ever negotiated."
In return, the United States and the five other major powers committed to lift certain sanctions that have caused the Islamic republic of 75 million people major economic pain.
A deal would draw the curtain on a crisis that has raged since Iran's nuclear activities were first revealed some 12 years ago.
But Iranian negotiator Abbas Araghchi, quoted by state news agency IRNA, said Wednesday the two sides were "not bound by the schedule" agreed on April 2.
"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," he said.
A State Department official, Jeff Rathke, said however the US was "focused on June 30th as the deadline, and that's what we're devoting our efforts to."
"We won't have a deal until those technical details are done, and we expect the pace of the talks to continue unabated," he told reporters, adding "we think we can achieve that goal."
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
