Tehran, April 29 (IANS) The remedy for Iran’s economic problems cannot come out of the ongoing negotiations over the country’s nuclear programme, but it requires domestic determination to deal with the issue, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said here on Wednesday.
“One cannot find solutions to economic problems outside of the country in Lausanne, Geneva and New York, but the real remedy for the problems is inside the country,” state-run IRNA news agency quoted Khamenei as saying.
Iranian officials should focus on boosting domestic production, he said and urged the people and the government to use homemade articles instead of foreign goods.
He pointed out that nobody could deny the impact of illegal sanctions on the Iranian economy, “but everybody knows well that embargoes cannot prevent the fulfillment of the programmes for promotion of domestic production”.
As the US and Iranian negotiators are engaged in talks to hammer out the final details of a nuclear agreement, the White House is at loggerheads with some Republican lawmakers who are bent on derailing the deal.
The controversy has heated up over the past weeks as Iranian officials urged for the removal of economic and financial sanctions against Iran simultaneously with the implementation of a possible nuclear deal. However, the West, particularly some US congressmen, have insisted on the gradual removal of sanctions.
Experts from Iran and world powers concluded a three-day meeting in Vienna on Friday after talks on technical details in the possible comprehensive deal to be reached before the deadline of June 30.
Negotiators would continue to draft the deal on the sidelines of the upcoming 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) at the UN headquarters in New York.
On April 2, Iran and the P5+1 group — the US, Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany — reached common understanding on outstanding issues ahead of the June 30 deadline for a comprehensive deal.