Saturday, July 12, 2014

Western Foreign Ministers Due in Vienna

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, British Foreign Secretary William Hague, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier are due in Vienna this weekend to join ongoing nuclear talks with Iran. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif is already in Vienna. The foreign ministers of Russia and China are not scheduled to take part in the talks.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham said on Wednesday that the two sides are now dealing with the most “controversial” points in their talks. On Monday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggested Tehran will be asking for significantly more enrichment capabilities that it currently has, and the P5+1 apparently sticking to its position that Iran could maintain only a “fraction” of its current enrichment work.

State Department has said Kerry’s participation in the talks this weekend is to assess if progress could be made on the issues where significant gaps remain, and if the current interim agreement that expires on 20 July needed to be extended to give negotiators more time to strike a deal.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is an important significance that the Russian and Chinese FM will not be present........

Is a reason of their absence, a lack of logic, on the side of other interlocutors confronting the rights of the Islamic Republic ??

A-F

Anonymous said...

A -F, That is a good question that any observer with an iota of objectivity should ask. Why would they stay away from the negotiation at this very critical stage, could it probably be because they have other pressing issues at hand or because their partners in the p5+1 group have started appearing like a bully - in the opinion of the real international community - which they intend to dissociate their nations from?

I wish a win win agreement could be reached between them before the July 20th deadline but it appears we are moving towards the other end.