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 The talks between Iran and the United States, Britain, France,
Germany, Russia and China are re-starting after a two-month hiatus
and amid Washington and Tehran ruling out cooperation on fighting
Islamic State militants who have taken over swaths of Iraq and
Syria.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and European Union
foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will discuss the negotiations
on a long-term nuclear deal over lunch on Thursday, diplomats said.
The EU has been a kind of interlocutor for the six powers.
Diplomats from the six countries will begin meeting among themselves
on Thursday before they all sit down with the Iranian delegation on
Friday. The negotiations are expected to run until at least Sept. 26
on the sidelines of next week's annual gathering of world leaders at
the United Nations General Assembly.
Ahead of the formal negotiations, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State
William J. Burns and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
Wendy Sherman - the number 2 and 3 diplomats at the State Department
- will hold bilateral talks with Iranian officials on Thursday and
Friday, the State Department said.
"The talks are going to be on the nuclear issue. At times other
topics have come up on the sidelines, but that’s not the purpose or
the intent, as is always the case," a U.S. official said on
condition of anonymity about the bilateral talks.
U.S. and Iranian officials discussed the crisis in Iraq on the
sidelines of the Vienna nuclear talks in June, though they have
ruled out cooperating with each other on dealing with the threat
posed by Islamic State in the region.
Sherman, who heads the U.S. delegation, said in a speech at
Georgetown University on Tuesday that more movement from Iran will
be needed to secure a long-term agreement.
"We can say on the positive side that our talks have been serious
and that we have identified potential answers to some key
questions," Sherman said. She also said "we remain far apart on
other core issues, including the size and scope of Iran's uranium
enrichment capacity."
Iran denies Western allegations that it is refining uranium to
develop the capability to assemble nuclear weapons, saying it is
doing it to help generate electricity.
The United States and its allies have in recent years imposed ever
tighter financial and others sanctions on Iran, a major oil
producer, to make it scale back its nuclear program.
CENTRIFUGE CAPACITY
Western governments want Iran to have a centrifuge capacity in the
low, single-digit thousands so that it would take Tehran a long time
to use the machines to purify enough uranium to fuel an atomic
weapon. Tehran has rejected demands to significantly reduce the
number below the more than 19,000 it has now installed, of which
roughly half are operating.
Zarif, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York,
complained about what he described as unreasonable demands by
Western powers in the nuclear talks but added that Tehran was
committed to resolving the decade-long nuclear stand.
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"We are committed to resolving this issue, we want to resolve this
issue," he said, though he said later that Iran is "totally
distrustful of the United States". Iran, diplomats close to the
talks said, appears unwilling to reduce the number of its
centrifuges to below 10,000.
But that would be an unacceptable for the six powers, who diplomats
say are aiming to have a deal in place that leaves Iran in a
position where it would need at least one year to produce enough
high enriched uranium for a single bomb - the so-called "breakout"
capacity.
"On the question of enrichment we have practically made no
progress," a senior Western diplomat said. "The six want that in
case the agreement is broken and the nuclear activities restart
towards a military objective, that we have a breakout capacity of a
year."
Diplomats said a breakthrough in the New York negotiations was
unlikely.
"Things remain blocked," the senior Western diplomat said. "New York
will be vital to see if we can break the impasse."
Depending on how the negotiations among senior foreign ministry
officials go in the coming days, another Western diplomat said
foreign ministers might join the talks late next week "if good
progress is being made or if there's a blockage."
Talks between Iran and the six were formally started during last
year's General Assembly, when Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry sat side-by-side during a special side meeting. Last November
in Geneva, Iran and the six reached an interim agreement under which
Tehran won some easing of sanctions in return for halting its most
sensitive nuclear work.
But they failed to meet a July 20 target for a comprehensive
agreement under which Iran would further curb its atomic activities
in exchange for a gradual lifting of sanctions, and they set a new
deadline of Nov. 24.
(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations,
Lesley Wroughton and Arshad Mohammed in Washington, Luke Baker in
Jerusalem and John Irish in Paris; Editing by Grant McCool and
Andrew Hay)
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