Iranian Deputy FM and senior negotiator Seyed Abbas Araghchi who is currently in New York and working on the drafting of a final nuclear agreement with the 5+1 group maintained that while the process was ‘slow,’ ‘steady’ and ‘moving forward,’ “there are still a number of disagreements on certain issues and some brackets and loose ends which are many.”
In response to the US Secretary of State’s recent remarks on the IAEA permanent inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities, Araghchi maintained that this was ‘no unusual case’ as it was one of the basic principles of the NPT; “all countries who sign the NPT and obtain the peaceful nuclear energy accept the IAEA inspections as a way to build trust.”
Araghchi stressed the topic of the IAEA inspections was a serious part of the negotiations and what the Islamic Republic was offering the other side was to ‘build trust.’ “Once the drafting of the agreement is completed, we will set a date as to when the agreement will be implemented,” he said.
Araghchi, Takht-Ravanchi and Schmid continued writing the draft of the comprehensive agreement on the sidelines of and following the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in New York on Thursday. The sides began the work in Vienna, Austria, on April 22.
The next round of talks between the two sides would be held in a European country but the exact date has not been determined yet.
Iran and the 5 UN Security Council permanent members plus Germany reached a mutual understanding on Tehran’s nuclear program in the Swiss city of Lausanne on April 2.
Iran and the six states have agreed to finalize a comprehensive deal on Tehran’s nuclear program by the end of June.
By Mehr News Agency
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