Iran, European Countries Hold Nuclear Talks in Vienna

Local Editor

Officials from Iran and Britain, France and Germany were due Thursday to hold nuclear talks in Vienna towards reaching a potentially historic accord by November.

The three European countries form part of a six-nation group including the United States, Russia and China due to resume negotiations with Iran in New York on September 18.

The closed-door discussions in the Austrian capital, announced by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton's office, follow bilateral US-Iranian discussions in Geneva last week.

A US State Department spokeswoman told reporters Tuesday that those talks in Switzerland were an "in-depth exchange on the core issues," without giving further details.
The recent diplomatic flurry also saw Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif fly to Moscow, Brussels and Paris as well as Rome to meet Ashton's successor from November 1, Federica Mogherini.

The quartet meeting between senior Iranian nuclear negotiator, Sayyed Abbas Araqchi, and the representatives of France, Britain and Germany will take place within the framework of nuclear talks in on Thursday.
Recently, Araqchi held separate bilateral talks with French representative to the Sextet group of world powers, Nicolas de Rivière, in Paris, and the US representative in nuclear talks, Wendy Sherman, in the Swiss city of Geneva.

Tehran, which says its nuclear program is exclusively for electricity generation and medical uses, in return wants painful UN and Western sanctions lifted.
On July 18, two days before a deadline to get a deal and after months of intense talks, negotiators from Iran and the six powers decided to give themselves until November 24 to nail down the accord.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team