Geneva, March 2 (IANS) US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday urged Iran to take more decisive steps to meet the requirements for reaching a final deal over its nuclear programme.
“Unless Iran is able to make the difficult decisions that are required, there won’t be a deal,” Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying at a press conference after addressing the High-Level Segment of the Human Rights Council here in Geneva.
“Right now, no deal exists, no partial deal exists,” he said.
However, Kerry said he saw “some progress” in the talks as negotiators were trying hard to reach the outline of a final deal that they want by July.
Later on Monday, Kerry is supposed to meet his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif in Montreux, Switzerland, where the new round of Iran nuclear talks will start.
The talks will be continued on Wednesday by senior diplomats from Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers, namely the US, Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany.
It has been over a year since Iran and the world’s major countries agreed to come back to the negotiating table for the Iranian nuclear programme in 2013.
Under an interim deal between Iran and the P5+1 inked in November, 2013, Iran said it would suspend critical nuclear activities in return for limited easing of sanctions, with all sides seeking a comprehensive deal.
After missing two self-imposed deadlines, the negotiators agreed in November 2014 to extend the deadline for seven more months and aimed to reach a political framework deal by the end of March.