Iran has offered some new solutions to resolve the disputes in the nuclear talks on Wednesday, but Western officials suggested they had heard nothing new from Tehran.
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The United States and its European allies are determined to keep the arms and missile sanctions in place in the event of a nuclear deal with Iran.
United States Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi were meeting on Thursday morning.
A day before, Obama had reportedly told senators that the chances of an accord being inked were “less than 50-50”.
“Despite speculations by certain media outlets, we have no interest in adding fuel to this fire”, he said at a press briefing in Ufa, in response to a request for comment on the Greece crisis.
However a senior Western diplomat said it was “very doubtful” the talks would finish on Thursday.
His assessment came as world powers readied for a late-night push to forge a deal that would curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for an easing of sanctions.
Lavrov also says that there is no strict deadline for a potential deal.
If the deal is not reached by the end of Thursday, the time that Congress gets for reviewing the text doubles from one to two months, according to a recent bill passed by the legislature.
The Russian foreign minister also outlined the basic principles of a possible deal. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and his British and German counterparts have also rejoined the negotiations.
The arms issue shows how the negotiations are in a sense held hostage to the benefits to accrue to two state-run commercial behemoths-Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who are deeply esconsed in the country’s economy and must somehow be mollified financially; and Rosoboronexport, Russia’s powerful weapons export arm, run by a ex- KGB special forces operative named Anatoly Isaykin. Iran is under a weapons embargo but wants to import missiles from Russian Federation.
Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program appeared set to burst through yet another deadline on Thursday amid persistent uncertainty and vague pronouncements from participants.
“We are calling for lifting the embargo as soon as possible and we will support the choices that Iran’s negotiators make”, he said at a summit of BRICS countries – Brazil, China, India, Russian Federation and South Africa.
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Iranian president Hasan Rouhani met today with Putin in Ufa (see photo above).
