P5+1 political directors may meet in early November: Russia

“There is no clarity. I think it will take place in the first decade of November, but so far it is just ideas and nothing more than preliminary estimates,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Monday.

Meanwhile, representatives of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, headed by Director General for Political and International Affairs at Iran’s Foreign Ministry Hamid Ba’eedinejad, left for Vienna on Tuesday to attend the expert-level meetings scheduled to be held on Wednesday and Thursday.

The six world powers’ technical delegation is headed by Stephen Clement, an aide to the European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton.

The two sides will discuss the level of uranium enrichment in Iran, the process of the total removal of sanctions and the duration of a final nuclear agreement.

Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – China, Russia, Britain, France, and the United States – plus Germany are in talks to work out a final deal aimed at ending the longstanding dispute over Tehran’s nuclear energy program as a November 24 deadline approaches.

Last year, the two sides clinched an interim nuclear accord, which took effect on January 20 and expired six months later. However, they agreed to extend their talks until November 24 as they remained divided on a number of key issues.