Vienna talks based on Iran’s plans, initiatives

Iran’s Foreign Ministry says no new proposals have been offered by P5+1 during nuclear talks in Vienna and Iran was the sole party putting new initiatives on the table.

“During the past three days, intense and numerous bilateral and multilateral talks have been held based on multiple plans and initiatives offered by Iran’s negotiating team…[during previous talks] in Omani capital, Muscat,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said on Friday.

She added that negotiations between the two sides will continue at various expert and political levels.

“No new plans have been offered by the member states of P5+1,” Afkham emphasized.

On Friday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said despite extensive negotiations between Iran and P5+1 in the Austrian capital, Vienna, the group did not offer any significant proposals to Iran.

“There were many discussions during Vienna negotiations, but there were no new ideas and no significant proposal that I could take to Tehran,” Zarif told reporters in Vienna.

Zarif met with US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU coordinator, Catherine Ashton, on Friday. The meeting was part of the negotiations between Iran and P5+1 – the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany – to work out a final deal aimed at ending the longstanding standoff over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program.

Sources close to the Iranian negotiating team say the main stumbling block in the way of resolving the dispute over Iran’s nuclear energy program remains to be the removal of all the bans imposed on the country, and not the number of Iran’s centrifuges or the level of uranium enrichment.

Tehran wants the sanctions entirely lifted while Washington, under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby, insists that at least the UN-imposed sanctions should remain in place.