Tehran, June 27 (IANS) Part of the solutions to Iran’s nuclear issue reached in Lausanne in Switzerland early April are not feasible, Iran’s senior nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araqchi, said on Saturday.
“We reached some good solutions in Lausanne and they are now used (for preparing the draft for a deal),… however, some solutions of Lausanne are not approachable,” Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iran’s Student News Agency (ISNA). However, Araqchi did not specify which part of the solutions were not feasible.
After the Lausanne talks, some P5+1 countries — the US, Britain, France, Russia, China, plus Germany — made some comments showing a change in their earlier stance and this has made the job a little difficult, he said.
“We are presently working on these points (of difference) and hope that they can be resolved in a reasonable manner,” he added.
Iran and the US have somewhat different interpretations on the details of the sanctions relief policy outlined in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) of April 2.
Iran’s version stressed the benefits to that country, anticipating sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear programme will be lifted immediately if a final deal is agreed.
In the US narrative, however, the US and EU nuclear-related sanctions “will be suspended after the IAEA has verified” that Iran has taken all of its key nuclear-related steps, and these sanctions will “snap back into place if at any time Iran fails to fulfill its commitment”.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif has stressed repeatedly that the action plan is not legally binding, and instead, it only offers a path to a final solution, a comprehensive accord.
But in the text of the US “fact sheet” on the action plan, expressions and terms such as “Iran has agreed that”, “Iran will be required to” and “Iran will not” are used very frequently, which gave people the impression that Iran has already made very specific commitments.
The US published a full text of the preliminary accord, while the version released by the Iranian side is much more like a concise guide to action, which fell short of mentioning some specific terms of agreements, such as “Iran has agreed not to build any new facilities for the purpose of enriching uranium for 15 years” and “Iran will only enrich uranium at the Natanz facility, with only 5,060 IR-1 first-generation centrifuges for 10 years”.
Iran has rejected the western interpretation that, under the JCPOA, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be able to check Iran’s military sites.
On Saturday, Araqchi said that Iran does not consider extension of the talks for another span of months. “It is possible that the talks can be stretched for some days,” he said.