Iran, US to Merely Focus on Nuclear Issues in Geneva Talks: Negotiator
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An upcoming meeting between Iranian and US delegations in Geneva will only cover nuclear issues, including removal of sanctions imposed on Tehran, an Iranian deputy foreign minister stressed.
Iranian nuclear negotiators are set to hold separate meetings with delegations from Russia and the US before a fresh round of nuclear talks between Tehran and the sextet of world powers (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) in Vienna.
The talks will be held at the deputy foreign minister level.
“In the talks, not any topic other than the nuclear discussions with the (Group) 5+1 will be mooted, as we have always insisted,” Abbas Araqchi, also a senior nuclear negotiator, said in a television interview on Sunday.
Accompanied by Deputy Foreign Minister for American and European Affairs Majid Takht Ravanchi, Araqchi will lead the Iranian delegation in Geneva on June 9 and 10.
And US Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman will lead the US delegation.
Araqchi said that the forthcoming meeting with Americans is indeed a trilateral one, since Deputy EU Foreign Policy Chief Helga Schmid will join the Iranian and US diplomats in Switzerland.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Araqchi made clear that lifting of the sanctions, mostly imposed by the US on Iran, will be another subject of debate in the talks between Tehran and Washington.
Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) are scheduled to convene a new round of high-profile negotiations in the Austrian capital from June 16 to 20.
The upcoming negotiations are aimed at drafting a comprehensive deal to resolve the decade-long standoff over Tehran's peaceful nuclear energy program.