Zarif, Kerry to meet in Geneva on January 14

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry will hold a bilateral meeting in the Swiss city of Geneva on January 14 for talks on Tehran’s peaceful nuclear program, a top Iranian negotiator said.

Seyyed Abbas Araghchi, a senior member of the Iranian team of nuclear negotiators and a deputy foreign minister, announced on Friday that the top Iranian and US diplomats will travel to Geneva to “offer the necessary guidance” before their deputies hold nuclear talks.

According to Araghchi, negotiating teams from Iran and the US are slated to hold bilateral meetings in the Swiss city from January 15 to 17.

Later on January 18, Iran and the group of six world powers (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) will resume nuclear talks in Geneva at the deputy ministerial level, he added.

Araghchi also unveiled plans for bilateral meetings between Iran and Russia ahead of the Geneva talks.

“On Monday, January 12, Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister and that country’s representative in the nuclear talks, will travel to Iran for bilateral nuclear negotiations,” he noted.

Negotiations on Iran’s peaceful nuclear program will resume after a one-month hiatus. The parties concluded a round of deputy-level talks in Switzerland on December 17.

The talks in Geneva was the first round of negotiations between the two sides after they wrapped up a week of intensive nuclear talks in Vienna on November 24 without reaching a long-awaited deal they were supposed to hammer out by the November 24 deadline.

The parties, however, decided to extend for more 7 months the deadline for signing a comprehensive agreement.

Negotiations between Iran and the sextet aim to hammer out a final agreement to end more than a decade of impasse over Tehran’s peaceful nuclear program.