Geneva, May 30 (IANS) Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry have resumed talks in the Swiss city of Geneva in another diplomatic bid to pin down a final deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme.
During their meeting on Saturday, the top Iranian and US diplomats will discuss the latest developments in the nuclear talks between Tehran and the P5+1 group of countries comprising the US, Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Ministers Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takht-e Ravanchi as well as Hamid Baeedinejad, who is the director general for political and international affairs at Iran’s foreign ministry, arrived in Geneva on Saturday to join Zarif.
The Iranian negotiators wrapped up three days of talks with representatives of the six global powers in the Austrian capital of Vienna on Friday.
Speaking to Press TV on Friday , Baeedinejad said good progress has been made on the issue of the removal of anti-Iran sanctions during the Vienna talks.
The senior Iranian nuclear negotiator also said the idea of foreign access to the country’s military sites has never been on the agenda of the talks.
“In fact, the inspection of military installations has never been on the agenda in our negotiations. As we have made it very clear, we never accepted that there could be inspections from the military sites in our country,” he added.
US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and Wendy Sherman, the undersecretary for political affairs, are also expected to join the US secretary of state at the Geneva talks. Helga Schmid, the European Union’s (EU) political director, was also present at the talks.
High-ranking nuclear negotiators from Iran and the five veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council and Germany are seeking to finalise a comprehensive deal on Tehran’s civilian nuclear activities by the end of June.