|
 But U.S. officials warned that most sanctions against the Islamic
Republic would remain in place during the extended talks.
The announcement came in the early hours of Saturday after nearly
three weeks of marathon talks in a 19th century Viennese palace,
where senior officials from Iran, the United States, Britain,
France, Germany, Russia and China were holed up in negotiating rooms
struggling to reach an agreement.
Iran will be allowed to access in tranches an additional $2.8
billion of its frozen assets during the period of extended talks,
senior U.S. officials told reporters in Vienna.
"Iran will not get any more money during these four months than it
did during the last six months, and the vast majority of its frozen
oil revenues will remain inaccessible," U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry in a statement released in Vienna on Saturday. "We will
continue to vigorously enforce the sanctions that remain in place."
It remains uncertain whether four more months of high-stakes talks
will yield a final deal, since major underlying differences remain
after six rounds of meetings this year.
Western nations fear Iran's nuclear program may be aimed at
developing a nuclear weapons capability. Tehran denies this.
The six powers want Iran to significantly scale back its nuclear
enrichment program to make sure it cannot yield nuclear bombs. Iran
wants sanctions that have severely damaged its oil-dependent economy
to be lifted as soon as possible.
After years of rising tension between Iran and the West and fears of
a new Middle East war, last year's election of a pragmatist, Hassan
Rouhani, as Iran's president led to a thaw in ties that resulted in
the current nuclear negotiations.
A senior U.S. official told reporters that Washington would make
clear to countries around the world that "Iran is not open for
business" during the four months of extended talks.
In exchange for the $2.8 billion, Kerry said, Iran agreed to take
several steps, including to keep neutralizing its most sensitive
uranium stocks - uranium that has been enriched to a level of 20
percent purity - by converting it to fuel for a research reactor in
Tehran used to make medical isotopes.
Kerry said the future of Iran's enrichment program was one of the
most divisive topics.
"There are very real gaps on issues such as enrichment capacity at
the Natanz enrichment facility," he said. "This issue is an
absolutely critical component of any potential comprehensive
agreement. We have much more work to do in this area, and in others
as well."
[to top of second column] |
"FEET TO THE FIRE"
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told Reuters in Cairo that
major disagreements remained though some had been resolved.
"There have been some advances toward finding an agreement, that's
why we decided to extend the negotiations," he said. "If we had
thought there was no potential for a deal we would have stopped
immediately."
Some members of U.S. Congress are eager to impose new and tougher
sanctions on Iran. Several senior U.S. officials said on Saturday
that they would continue to oppose new sanctions as long as the
negotiations are underway but would drop their opposition if the
talks were to collapse.
"We understand Congress' desire to hold Iran's feet to the fire,"
one of the U.S. officials said.
The talks are taking place because of an interim accord Iran and the
six reached in Geneva in November 2013 that gave Tehran limited
sanctions relief - including cash - in exchange for halting some
nuclear work. That created time and space for the negotiation of a
permanent deal to end the decade-long dispute.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters earlier
this week that Tehran would be willing to delay development of an
industrial-scale uranium enrichment program for up to seven years
and to keep the 19,000 centrifuges it has installed so far for this
purpose.
But Kerry said after several face-to-face meetings with Zarif it was
"crystal clear" that for Iran to keep all of its existing
centrifuges was out of the question.
Another difficult issue in the talks, diplomats said, is how to
address Iran's suspected past atomic bomb research and the duration
of any long-term restrictions on its nuclear program. The
negotiations began in February in Vienna.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Zarif said in a joint
statement that the talks would resume in the coming weeks. The
extension begins on July 21 and runs through Nov. 24.
(Additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl in Vienna and John Irish in
Cairo; Writing by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Lisa Shumaker,
Mohammad Zargham and Rosalind Russell)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
