Source: Iran’s Top Negotiator to Remain in Vienna, Talks to Go On
VIENNA (Tasnim) – A source close to the team of Iranian negotiators engaged in nuclear talks with world powers rejected earlier reports that the country’s chief negotiator and foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, might return home for consultations.
“Since (the nuclear talks in) Muscat up to now, we have proposed different ideas. These ideas have not still reached such a level to be referred to Tehran by Dr. Zarif. Thus, he will not go to Tehran and the negotiations will continue,” the sourced said on Friday.
The announcement came after speculations were fueled earlier in the day that Zarif may leave Vienna for Tehran for consultations and exchange of views with high-ranking officials on nuclear talks.
The source’s hint about Muscat talks suggest that the parties are yet to reach a conclusion on the issues they discussed in Oman earlier this month.
Back on November 9 and 10, Iran’s Zarif, US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU envoy Catherine Ashton held four rounds of discussions in the Omani capital.
They have also held two rounds of trilateral meetings in the fresh talks in Vienna that began on Tuesday and are expected to run until at least the self-imposed deadline of November 24.
Meanwhile, Kerry and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius will return to Paris later on Friday for consultations on the Iranian nuclear issue, US and French officials said.
French officials said Fabius would head back to Paris and was also set to return over the weekend.
Zarif, Kerry and Fabius were holding a series of different meetings in Vienna on Friday with European Union envoy Catherine Ashton and British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.
Hammond told reporters after his meeting with Zarif that significant differences have remain between the two negotiating parties.
On November 24, 2013, Iran and the G5+1 (alternatively known as the P5+1 or E3+3) signed an interim nuclear deal in the Swiss city of Geneva.
The Geneva deal (the Joint Plan of Action) came into effect in January and expired in July, when the parties decided to extend negotiations until November 24 in the hope of clinching a final, comprehensive deal that would end a decade of impasse over Tehran’s peaceful nuclear energy program.
