Iran, World Powers’ Nuclear Talks on Positive Track: German Analyst
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The nuclear talks between Iran and the world powers are moving in the right direction, director of the Middle East Team at the Berlin-based Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) Foundation said.
“The negotiations have been on a positive track since November 2013. Thus, there is hope for finding a solution which is good for both sides and can bring an end to the disputes for good,” Dr. Oliver Ernst said in an interview with the Tasnim News Agency.
He added that ending the disputes over Tehran’s nuclear energy program can lead to improved relations between Iran and the US and Iran and the West in general.
Iran and the G5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain, France as well as Germany) have held several rounds of talks since they signed an interim deal on Tehran’s nuclear issue back in November.
The deal, known as the Geneva Agreement, stipulates that over the course of six months, the parties will draw up a comprehensive nuclear deal which will lead to a lifting of the whole US-led sanctions on Iran.
Representatives of Iran and the Group 5+1 wrapped up the latest round of their nuclear talks in the Austrian capital of Vienna on April 9.
The negotiating parties are slated to convene the next meeting on May 13, again in Vienna, to start drafting the text of an ultimate agreement to end the decade-long standoff on Iran’s nuclear case.
Meanwhile, expert-level negotiations between the two sides started in New York on Monday.
Dr. Ernst, elsewhere in the interview, referred to US visa denial to Iran’s newly-appointed ambassador to the United Nations and said while Washington’s decision could further disrupt relations between the two countries in the short run, it will not affect the Iran-G 5+1 nuclear negotiations.
He stressed that Tehran and Washington should strive to settle the issue diplomatically. “If that happens, it will be great achievement for both sides.”
The US Senate passed a legislation last month seeking to bar Hamid Abutalebi, Iran’s newly-appointed ambassador to the UN, from entering the American soil.
Senior Iranian officials have slammed Washington’s decision, describing it as entirely irrational.
The US has decided to deny a visa to Abutalebi over his possible involvement in the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran during post-revolution incidents in 1979.
On November 4, 1979, and in less than a year after the victory of the Islamic Revolution that toppled a US-backed monarchy, Iranian university students that called themselves "students following the line of (the late) Imam (Khomeini)" seized the US embassy in Tehran.
The students justified the takeover by insisting that the compound had become a "den of espionage" and was used by the Americans to overthrow the newly established Islamic system in Iran.
The students occupying the embassy later published documents proving that the compound was indeed engaged in plans and measures to overthrow the Islamic Republic.