Advertisement

IAEA chief to visit Iran as nuclear talks extended

The Local/AFP
The Local/AFP - [email protected]
IAEA chief to visit Iran as nuclear talks extended
The talks are being held in Vienna's Palais Coburg. Photo: Wikimedia/Gryffindor

Make-or-break nuclear negotiations taking place in Vienna have ramped up a gear with the head of the UN nuclear watchdog set to fly to Iran for talks after the deadline to reach a deal was extended.

Advertisement

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini was also due to return to Vienna on Thursday along with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, while his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi is also planning to joining this round of talks for the first time, a French diplomat said.

With a new deadline now set for July 7th, different diplomatic sources confirmed to AFP that Yukiya Amano, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), would leave for Tehran later in the day.

Teams of experts have been working virtually around the clock for weeks to try to hammer out a deal which would put a nuclear bomb out of Iran's reach in return for lifting a labyrinth of biting EU, US and UN sanctions.

One sticking point has been ensuring access for IAEA inspectors to Iranian military sites to verify whether in the past or present Iran has sought to develop nuclear weapons.

Iranian leaders have vehemently denied such accusations, but have bristled at the notion of allowing unimpeded access to sensitive military sites, or IAEA interviews with its nuclear scientists.

In a sign of a possible breakthrough, Iranian media said Amano, who has been closely involved in this week's negotiations between global powers and Iran in Vienna, would meet on Thursday in Tehran with President Hassan Rouhani and the chairman of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani.

"The goal of Yukiya Amano's trip is to talk about past activities and receive Iran's suggestions on how to resolve the differences," the Iranian news agency IRNA said, quoting a source close to the Iranian negotiating team.

Under any deal, it will be up to the IAEA, which already keeps close tabs on Iran's declared nuclear sites with between four and ten inspectors on the ground on any given day, to verify that Iran really does reduce its capacities.

But the so-called P5+1 powers -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- also want the IAEA to have wider inspection rights to verify any suspicious activity that might indicate covert work on a nuclear bomb.

Ready to walk away

US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif are expected to hold new talks on Wednesday in Vienna, after they met on Tuesday following Zarif's whistle-stop trip back to Iran for consultations.

US President Barack Obama insisted on Tuesday that a "strong, rigorous verification mechanism" for monitoring Iran's nuclear sites was needed and warned Iran's leaders he would walk away from a "bad deal."

Obama said his instructions to negotiators in Vienna had been "extremely clear" -- that a deal must block Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who flew into Vienna on Tuesday, said after almost two years of trying, he still believed a deal to end the 13-year standoff was "within reach".

The talks are "progressing in a positive direction. There remain questions, mostly regarding procedural issues rather than technical," Lavrov told Russian television after talks with Kerry.

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also