Iran Nuclear Talks: Luxemburg to Host Ministerial Meeting
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will travel to Luxemburg on Monday to meet with his British, French and German counterparts and the European Union's foreign policy chief for talks on a final deal on Tehran's peaceful nuclear program.
It will be the first time the small European state hosts the negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, with the previous meetings mostly held in Switzerland and Austria.
In the forthcoming talks, Zarif is going to meet Britain's Philip Hammond, Germany's Frank-Walter Steinmeier, France's Laurent Fabius and EU's Federica Mogherini to discuss the text of a long-awaited deal.
Top Iranian negotiators and deputies to foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takht Ravanchi, will also leave deputy-level talks in the Austrian capital of Vienna to join Zarif in Luxemburg.
Experts, however, will stay in Vienna to press on with the job of drafting the text of the comprehensive deal. Iranian Foreign Ministry's Director General for the Political and International Affairs Hamid Baeidinejad heads the country's team of experts.
The fresh round of diplomatic negotiations to draft the text of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will continue steadily until the self-imposed deadline of June 30.
Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) are negotiating to hammer out a lasting accord that would end more than a decade of impasse over Tehran's civilian nuclear program.
On April 2, the two sides reached a framework nuclear agreement in Lausanne, Switzerland, with both sides committed to push for a final deal until the end of June.
Meanwhile Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Friday that the sextet has so far failed to agree on the issue of lifting the arms embargo against Iran.
"This is one of the main stumbling points within the P5+1 (G5+1). We have not reached understanding on this issue," Ryabkov told reporters.
In a resolution in March 2007, the UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Iran amid accusations that the country was seeking to build nuclear weapons.
