by Parisa Hafezi, John Irish and Francois Murphy
VIENNA (Reuters) – Negotiators engaged in indirect talks between Iran and the United States to save the Vienna nuclear deal in Iran have just weeks to reach a deal, Europeans warned on Friday and the coordinator of the talks, which were adjourned for at least ten days.
Negotiations have made little progress since they resumed on November 29 in the Austrian capital, for the first time since the election last June to the Iranian presidency of the ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raïssi.
Delegates from the Islamic Republic call for drastic changes to the draft agreement sketched in the first six rounds of talks, between April and June, as Western powers warn that time is running out to curb nuclear activities from Iran.
“We do not have months before us, rather weeks, to conclude an agreement”, underlined the coordinator of the discussions and emissary of the European Union Enrique Mora during a press conference in Vienna.
The Spanish diplomat said he hoped for a resumption of talks before the end of the year, with some officials citing the date of December 27.
Official sources said Iran had called for the end of talks, which the West wanted to extend until Tuesday.
According to Enrique Mora and other officials, Tehran’s demands have been incorporated into the existing text in order to have a common basis for negotiation.
The three European powers parties to the 2015 agreement [Plan d’action global commun, PAGC] – France, United Kingdom, Germany (E3) – were less optimistic.
Technical progress has been made in the past 24 hours but it only brings talks closer to where they left off in June, lamented E3, calling the disruption of talks a “disappointing break in negotiations “.
The Europeans urged Iran to quickly resume talks and engage constructively to speed up negotiations.
The Iranian delegation did not specify the reasons for its request for a halt to the talks.
“If the other side accepts Iran’s logical views, the next round of negotiations may be the last,” Iran’s chief negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani told reporters.
Indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington in Vienna, through the other parties to the 2015 agreement (France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia and China), aim to redefine the conditions on which the two countries could again respect. their obligations, Iran on uranium enrichment and the United States on the lifting of sanctions re-imposed by former President Donald Trump after his decision to denounce the agreement in 2018.
(Dubai office and Nicolas Delame report, written by Myriam Rivet and Jean-Stéphane Brosse, edited by Jean-Michel Bélot and Sophie Louet)