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Iran Talks Grind Into Overtime As Top Diplomats Leave

Iran Talks Grind Into Overtime As Top Diplomats Leave

By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

International talks over Iran’s disputed nuclear program moved into wearying overtime Wednesday, with their future unclear and a shrinking corps of top diplomats taking part.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry and other negotiators, who are seeking a preliminary deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for easing sanctions, failed to meet a self-imposed deadline at midnight Tuesday but kept going in search of a breakthrough.

Diplomats insist the closed-door talks are making progress, and could produce an acceptable outcome at any time that would kick the negotiations into their final phase.

Yet major conflicts remain and much work is needed, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told reporters.

Fabius, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi have already left Lausanne, leaving aides to negotiate for them.

One possibility is the talks will break up in the next day or so with only a general press statement, then resume after a few days to try to work out a detailed agreement that can help the Obama administration convince skeptics in Congress that it is making progress.

But a halt without a deal would be a setback for the White House, which is concerned that Congress will impose new sanctions that could wreck the talks when it returns April 13.

The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — the United States, France, Britain, Russia, and China — plus Germany have spent the last 18 months in intense talks with Iran in an effort to curb its nuclear program. Talks began more than a decade ago.

The diplomats missed two deadlines last year, and President Obama told them he wanted a definitive decision by Tuesday on whether an agreement with Iran was possible.

But the talks hit an impasse on several key issues, including the lifting of U.N. sanctions on Iran, and restraints on Iran’s research and development that could help it modernize its ability to enrich uranium. Iran denies it is seeking to build nuclear weapons.

The talks have careened from optimism to pessimism and back over the last week. Diplomats said Tuesday morning that a deal was in sight, and the delegations had prepared large meeting halls to announce a deal, and some in the U.S. party had packed their bags to go home.

But the discussions seemed to run aground Tuesday afternoon. “The mood changed hour to hour,” said one diplomat.

A senior U.S. official said in a statement before six p.m that American negotiators were “evaluating the best path forward.”

“It’s time for Iran to make the serious commitments that they know the international community is expecting them to make,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in Washington.

Without those pledges from Iran, the U.S. and its five negotiating partners will have to consider “other alternatives,” Earnest said.

Obama and his top aides held a late night secure video conference call with Kerry and his negotiating team and “thanked the team for their continuing efforts,” the White House announced.

Photo: U.S. Embassy Vienna via Flickr

Negotiations On Iran’s Nuclear Program Seem Headed Toward Overtime

Negotiations On Iran’s Nuclear Program Seem Headed Toward Overtime

By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — The U.S. and five other world powers prepared Tuesday to announce a preliminary agreement that would enable them to continue negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear program for the next three months, though with many key issues unresolved.

In six days of intense high-level talks, the group was able to avoid a breakdown that would have imperiled an 18-month effort to reach a deal curbing Iran’s nuclear activities. But the group has not reached agreement on some key issues.

Top diplomats are expected to make an announcement later Tuesday outlining the progress so far and a plan to meet a June 30 deadline for completing a final, detailed agreement.

U.S. officials denied that an agreement had been reached. But other officials said an announcement would be likely Tuesday afternoon or evening at a university in Lausanne.

Whether the progress so far, and an agreement to keep talking, would be enough to convince Congress and skeptical U.S. allies in the Middle East that the talks are worthwhile will be a major question over the next several weeks.

As Tuesday night’s deadline for the current round of talks neared, diplomats began making plans. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking in Moscow before returning to Switzerland for the expected announcement, said chances of an agreement were “high.”

The negotiations here seek a deal that would ease sanctions on Iran if it accepts, for ten to fifteen years, restrictions on its nuclear program.

The stakes are high. A deal could reduce the chances of war, ease Iran’s international isolation, and, over time, possibly transform America’s relationship with a longtime adversary. Critics say a bad deal would pave the way to an Iranian bomb and give Tehran a financial boost that could strengthen its efforts to expand its regional influence.

Foreign ministers from Iran, the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Russia, and China have struggled with a series of tough issues this week, notably what restrictions will remain on Iran’s research and development, and how quickly United Nations sanctions will be lifted.

Iranian officials maintained a tough stance as the deadline approached, in what some outside analysts said appeared to be an effort to create a last-minute crisis that would enable them to extract concessions.

U.S. officials have said that if they reached a “framework” deal they would release detailed information to Congress and provide more general information to the public to explain how they have resolved the major political issues involved in the talks.

But to the extent the agreement so far lacks detail, the deal-making is likely to come under attack by the critics.

“It could be very tricky for [Secretary of State John] Kerry,” said Gary Samore, a former top White House aide who is research director at the the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

The administration’s supporters have been urging them to release as many details as possible to strengthen what appears to be an uphill effort to defend the deal.

On Monday officials said the negotiators had set aside for the future one major issue: how to deal with Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium. Many private nuclear experts believed the diplomatic group had sealed an agreement with Iran that would have sent much of Iran’s enriched uranium to Russia to assure that it couldn’t be further enriched to make bomb fuel.

But diplomats acknowledged that in fact Iran was not committed to such an approach and that the issue was unresolved.

Photo: U.S. Embassy Vienna via Flickr