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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

Iran Nuclear Talks Halt Without Signs Of Progress

Iran Nuclear Talks Halt Without Signs Of Progress

By Paul Richter, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Two days of high-level meetings among Iran, the United States and the European Union on Iran’s nuclear program ended Monday in the Persian Gulf state of Oman without visible signs of progress.

With two weeks remaining before a negotiating deadline, the meetings between Secretary of State John F. Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and European Union envoy Catherine Ashton offered another opportunity for a long-awaited breakthrough in the multination negotiations.

State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki did not claim that the talks had advanced, but described the discussions as an effort to “continue to chip away at a very challenging issue.”

She insisted that “there is still time” to reach an agreement, while acknowledging that officials review after each meeting whether there is still time to complete a deal.

Iran and six world powers — France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China, and the United States — are seeking a deal that would lift economic sanctions on Iran’s economy if it agrees to limit its nuclear activities to nonmilitary purposes.

Iranian officials told state media that there had been no progress during the 10 hours of meetings.

In a brief public appearance Monday, Zarif, asked whether the group was making progress, said, “We will, eventually.”

The Omani hosts for the meeting had set up a stage, complete with national flags, to enable the leaders to hold a news conference after the meetings. But the stage went unused, as Kerry hurried off to the airport to depart for Beijing.

Some diplomats have said in recent weeks that the talks were near a breakthrough. But those hopes have not been realized.

President Barack Obama gave a sober assessment of the talks in a TV interview Sunday, saying that a deal may not be completed.

Adding to the complications, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stirred outrage by going on Twitter over the weekend to call for the annihilation of Israel.

Psaki said Obama administration officials “strongly condemn the hateful remarks made about Israel on Twitter from an account linked to the supreme leader.” The comments were “offensive and reprehensible” and “not conducive to regional security,” she said.

AFP Photo/Majid Asgaripour

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Indian, Pakistani Military Leaders Discuss Deadly Border Clashes

Indian, Pakistani Military Leaders Discuss Deadly Border Clashes

By Aoun Sahi and Shashank Bengali, Los Angeles Times

ISLAMABAD — Senior Indian and Pakistani military officials on Tuesday held their first official discussions since violence erupted along their disputed border last week, resulting in 20 deaths.
Pakistan’s director of military operations and his Indian counterpart used a regularly scheduled hotline call to discuss tensions along the boundary in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, according to Pakistani military sources who declined to discuss details of the conversation.
“Our military official conveyed Pakistan’s concerns to the Indian side,” one Pakistani official said, requesting anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the talks.
The phone call contributed to a sense that the crisis along the so-called Line of Control was easing on a day that neither side reported new violence. Each nation blames the other for unprovoked cross-border attacks on Oct. 5, sending thousands of villagers fleeing artillery rounds, mortar shells and machine gun fire.
Pakistan has accused India of committing 50 violations of a decade-long ceasefire this month and of targeting civilians in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, a charge that India dismissed.
The mountainous region is divided between the two countries along the Line of Control, but claimed in its entirety by both. The clashes last week marked one of the most significant flare-ups in the long-running border war since a 2003 cease-fire.
On Monday, Pakistan sent a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon accusing India of “deliberate and unprovoked violations of the cease-fire agreement” and asking the U.N. to intervene in the crisis. India on Tuesday rejected the letter as a ploy and said that there was “no place for third parties” in resolving the border dispute.
“India will not accept violence on the border or the Line of Control, or continued terrorism against our citizens,” foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin told reporters in New Delhi. “It is up to Pakistan to de-escalate the situation.”
Indian security forces would “respond appropriately to any attempts by Pakistan to undermine peace and tranquillity,” Akbaruddin said.
The election of a new government in New Delhi this year, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had raised hopes of a fresh start in India-Pakistan relations. But Modi’s government called off bilateral talks scheduled for August after a senior Pakistani diplomat held meetings with Indian Kashmiri separatists, accusing Islamabad of interfering in its domestic affairs.
Pakistan’s national security advisor, Sartaj Aziz, said the Indian military’s cross-border firing had also caused extensive injuries and property damage and distracted from the Pakistani army’s ongoing counter-terrorism operation in the restive North Waziristan tribal region.

AFP Photo/A Majeed

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