Sunday Times 2
Iran talks go into top gear in battle of wills
View(s):LAUSANNE, March 28, 2015 (AFP) -Tortuous negotiations aimed at laying to rest fears Iran will get nuclear weapons moved into top gear today as both sides demanded the other give ground as a deadline loomed.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif speaks with members of his delegation during talks at the Beau Rivage Palace Hotel in Lausanne (REUTERS)Apple's Tim Cook will give away all his money: Fortune
“We’re at that point in the negotiations where we really need to see decisions being made,” a senior US State Department official said late Friday at the talks in Lausanne, Switzerland.
“The work is very complicated and difficult. The other side needs to choose between pressure and a political accord,” countered Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
France’s top diplomat Laurent Fabius, the most hawkish in the P5+1 group of countries negotiating with Iran since late 2013, will be the first European minister to fly in for the crunch talks.
He will join US Secretary of State John Kerry, Zarif and negotiators from the six powers, chasing an agreement on the broad outlines of a what they hope will be a historic deal by Tuesday.
Since a major diplomatic push to resolve the long-running crisis began in 2013, Kerry and the US-educated Zarif have met multiple times but have twice missed a deadline to nail down an accord.
The powers want Iran to shrink its nuclear programme in order to make any dash to make a bomb under the guise of its civilian atomic programme all but impossible and easily detectable.
In return Iran wants an easing of international sanctions which have excluded the Islamic republic from lucrative oil markets and crippled its economy.
On Sunday China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov will reportedly fly in, as well as the EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.
Kerry, Fabius and German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier will have a working lunch Saturday, a US official said. Britain’s Philip Hammond said was on stand-by to come.
The emerging accord is to be rounded out with complex technical annexes by a June 30 deadline.