VIENNA — Fresh talks on reviving the
2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers restarted on Monday, with the
EU chair saying he felt "extremely positive" while admitting that
"difficult issues" have yet to be tackled.
اضافة اعلان
The talks in Vienna are the first since Iran
paused them in June after the election of ultraconservative new President
Ebrahim Raisi. Diplomats at the time had said they were "close" to an
agreement.
Iran ignored appeals from Western countries
to restart the talks for several months, all the while strengthening the
capabilities of its nuclear program. In August, Raisi said Iran was again open
to talks.
Monday's meeting started just after 3pm
(1400 GMT) in the Palais Coburg hotel where the 2015 agreement — known as the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — was clinched, and lasted a little
more than two hours.
Along with Iran, diplomats from Britain,
China, France, Germany and Russia are attending.
Enrique Mora, the EU official chairing the
talks, said there was "a sense of urgency in bringing the JCPOA back to
life" and added that he felt "extremely positive".
However, he admitted that "there are
still difficult issues ahead".
The United States is taking part in the
talks indirectly and has said that Iran's recent actions do not "augur
well" for the prospects of reviving the deal.
Iran's foreign ministry said in a statement
that Monday's meeting had taken place in a "professional and serious
atmosphere".
The head of Iran's delegation Ali Bagheri
had "underlined the necessity to make sanctions lifting an absolute
priority for the talks", it said.
'Precarious situation'
The JCPOA offered a lifting of some of the
array of economic sanctions Iran had been under in return for strict curbs on
its nuclear program.
But the deal started to unravel in 2018 when
then-US president Donald Trump pulled out and began reinstating sanctions on
Iran.
Ordinary Iranians are hoping the talks may
lead to some of those crippling sanctions being lifted.
Unemployed Tehran resident Davoud Lotfinia
told AFP: "The sanctions probably haven't affected the authorities, but
the purchasing power of ordinary people is diminishing every day."
The EU's Mora said that there was an
"urgency in putting an end to the suffering of the Iranian people".
The year after Trump's move, Iran retaliated
by starting to exceed the limits on its nuclear activity laid down in the deal.
In recent months, it has started enriching
uranium to unprecedented levels and has also restricted the activities of
inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog
charged with monitoring Iran's nuclear facilities.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said
"no progress" was made on issues he raised during a visit to Tehran
last week.
Mora said on Monday that getting Iran's
nuclear program under "transparent monitoring" was a matter of
"urgency".
A working group on lifting sanctions would
meet on Tuesday, Mora said, with a group focusing on nuclear-related
commitments meeting the following day.
'All options on table'
"Iran is acting like the United States
is going to blink first but ... pressure is a double-edged sword," Kelsey
Davenport, an expert with the Arms Control Association, told journalists last
week.
"If there are gaps in the IAEA's
monitoring, it will drive the speculation that Iran has engaged in illicit
activity, that it has a covert program, whether there's evidence to that or
not," Davenport said, which could in turn "undermine the prospects
for sustaining the deal".
In London, top Israel diplomat Yair Lapid
was scheduled to meet British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday, and
French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Tuesday.
Lapid also met his British counterpart Liz
Truss, and before the meeting the pair published an article in the Daily
Telgraph newspaper saying they would "work night and day to prevent the
Iranian regime from ever becoming a nuclear power".
British foreign minister Liz Truss added in
a statement that the UK wanted "Iran to agree to the original JCPOA"
but warned that if the talks "don't work, all options are on the
table".
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett urged
the country's allies "to not give into Iran's nuclear blackmail",
adding: "Such a murderous regime should not be rewarded."
Read more Region and World
.jpg)
.jpg)
