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Iran's nuclear program

Vienna hosts decisive round of Iran nuclear talks

Just one week is left before the November 24 deadline to agree on a final and comprehensive document

© EPA/DAI KUROKAWA

VIENNA, November 18. /TASS/. Iran and the six world powers (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), known as the P5+1, will engage in a new round of talks on Tehran’s nuclear program and Western sanctions against Iran in Vienna on Tuesday.

Just one week is left before the November 24 deadline to agree on a final and comprehensive document amid expectations that the negotiations are due to be extended.

The sides have failed to remove differences on the key issues, in particular, uranium enrichment parameters and the order and timeframe of lifting the sanctions introduced by the US, EU and the UN Security Council against Tehran.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier are expected to discuss the Iranian nuclear issue in Moscow on Tuesday.

“The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the world community should get a mechanism that would signal beforehand if Tehran suddenly decides to go beyond the peaceful character of its nuclear program,” a diplomatic source told TASS.

Western diplomats believe that one of the solutions to the issue could be an agreement between Moscow and Iran on the shipment of nuclear material to Russia.

A diplomatic source said “to agree on a potential scheme of shipping nuclear material from Iran to Russia and further processing it into nuclear fuel for the Bushehr reactor, the sides need to agree on all the parameters of the joint deal.”

Such an agreement between Moscow and Tehran “could become a part of a deal in the sense that it works towards achieving the main result — restoration of international trust to the exclusively peaceful character of the Iranian nuclear program.

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