Nuclear talks between Iran and world powers were hanging in the balance on Tuesday after two days of “very tough” talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart in Vienna.
“We are in the middle of talks about nuclear proliferation and reining in Iran’s programme, it is a really tough negotiation I will tell you,” Kerry said in the Austrian capital on Monday.
He said later after the talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif: “We are working, we are working very hard. Serious discussions. (It was a) good meeting.”
A senior US official said after a later three-way meeting between Iran, the United States and the European Union that there was “more work to do”. Kerry was due to give a news conference on Tuesday, the official said. Time is running very short.
A deadline for Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany to forge a deal is Sunday, when an interim accord from November expires.
This can be extended, allowing both sides to continue talking, but only if both sides agree and Washington insists that Iran first has to make major concessions.
The negotiations, which entered their sixth and final round on July 3, were however set to continue between lower-ranking officials and may go down to the wire of the July 20 cut-off.