Iran nuclear deal may need deadline extension, says UK foreign secretary

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/19/iran-nuclear-deal-deadline-extension

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A nuclear deal with Iran is unlikely to be completed on schedule by next Monday but there may be enough progress to warrant extending the deadline, Britain’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, has said.

Talks between Iran and six world powers on the future of the country’s nuclear programme are in their last week in Vienna, with significant gaps remaining between the negotiating positions on how much capacity for enriching uranium Tehran should have, and the speed at which international sanctions should be removed.

“I’m not optimistic that we can get everything done by Monday,” Hammond told reporters during a visit to the Latvian capital, Riga.

“But I think if we make some significant movement we may be able to find a way of extending the deadline to allow us to get to the final deal if we’re making good progress in the right direction.”

The foreign secretary said Iranian negotiators would have to show “considerable further flexibility” over the next four days to get a deal.

The official position of both the US and Iran, the two countries at the centre of the talks, is that an extension to the 24 November deadline is not under discussion. The cut-off date was agreed as part of an interim deal a year ago but as it approaches with no sign of a breakthrough on the outstanding issues, an extension is looking increasingly likely.

One option is that the participants agree a framework for a deal on Monday, leaving some of the details to be negotiated later, but it is unclear whether that would convince sceptics in both Washington and Tehran that the talks should be extended. A total collapse however, could bring escalating steps on both sides, and drag the region back to the brink of a new war.

The latest round of talks, which began on Tuesday at a hotel in central Vienna, have involved bilateral talks between Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and the lead American negotiator, Wendy Sherman. Other sessions have drawn in diplomats and experts from the other nations at the talks: the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China. The negotiations are being chaired by the former EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton.

The detailed discussions have focussed on finding creative ways to bridge the remaining differences, including the option of exporting or converting Iran’s stock of low enriched uranium so it does not pose an proliferation risk, while parsing the text of UN security council sanctions resolutions to decide which parts can be reversed immediately, and which parts would be lifted only after a few years.

The talks are expected to enter a particularly intensive last stretch, with the arrival of the US secretary of state, John Kerry, expected in the next 48 hours. In London on Wednesday, Kerry met the Omani foreign minister, Yusuf bin Alawi, for the second time in two days. Oman has been an intermediary between the US and Iran in the past, and Alawi met President Hassan Rouhani in Tehran on the weekend, after hosting a negotiating session in Muscat between Zarif, Kerry and Ashton.

“We do very much want to see a deal done with Iran, but we don’t want to do a bad deal. Better no deal than a bad deal,” Hammond said.

“The right deal with Iran has to be one which gives us the assurance we need that Iran’s programme is exclusively targeted at civil nuclear use, has no military dimension at all and where Iran’s enriched capacity is limited to a level which does not present any military threat,” he said.