Iran-Sextet Talks at “Most Crucial Stage”: Negotiator
VIENNA (Tasnim) – The negotiations between Iran and the sextet of world powers (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) over Tehran’s peaceful nuclear program have reached the most crucial stage, a senior Iranian negotiator said.
Speaking to reporters in Austria’s Vienna on Tuesday night, Abbas Araqchi of Iran, a deputy foreign minister and member of the country’s team of nuclear negotiators, said the negotiating parties are now at the most crucial stage of the talks on Tehran’s nuclear case.
Araqchi, however, made it clear that Iran’s “defensive systems and equipment are not negotiable at all.”
He made the comments in response to some western speculations that the Islamic Republic’s capabilities in the sphere of ballistic missiles could be a subject of the marathon talks over Iran’s nuclear energy program.
Araqchi also added that a group of Iranian law experts and academics have been assigned to assist the team of nuclear negotiators with drafting the text of a final nuclear accord.
A fresh round of nuclear talks between Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, the US, Britain, China, France and Germany) starts in the Austrian capital on Wednesday. The three-day talks are expected to focus on drafting an agreement that will provide a comprehensive solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.
The parties have already clinched an interim nuclear deal in the Swiss city of Geneva on November 24, 2013.
The breakthrough agreement (the Joint Plan of Action), which has come into effect since January 20, stipulates that over the course of six months, Iran and the six countries will draw up a comprehensive nuclear deal which will lead to a lifting of the whole sanctions on Iran.
