LAUSANNE, March 28. /TASS/. Participants of talks on Iran’s nuclear program will resume on Saturday their search for ways to settle the remaining disputable issues in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Representatives of the sides have not made public their program. It is expected that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry, with other officials also participating.
Meetings of political directors of the six international negotiators on Iran’s nuclear program and Iran will also be held today in bilateral and multilateral formats. The Russian delegation at the talks is led by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov.
The foreign ministers of the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France plus Germany) are expected to arrive in Lausanne Saturday to take part in the final stage of the talks. Only French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has confirmed his arrival yet.
The ministerial meeting of the P5+1 and Iran is due Sunday. Thus, the political directors as well as the Iranian and US top diplomats have one day left to seek principled solutions on disputable issues of Tehran’s nuclear program to present possible variants to ministers arriving in Lausanne.
Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif said Friday differences remain. According to an Iranian high-ranking diplomat, the differences concern the schedule of lifting sanctions from Tehran and the possibility for Tehran to continue nuclear research.
Zarif has stressed that in order to reach an agreement, Iran’s partners at the talks should display political will and stop pressuring Iran. A US delegation source, in turn, said it is Iran that should make important decisions regarding its nuclear program, otherwise no agreement might be reached.
At a meeting in Vienna in November 2014, the P5+1 and Tehran agreed to extend the deadline for an agreement in the talks on Iran’s nuclear program to June 30, 2015.
The agreement stipulated that by the end of March 2015, the sides planned to achieve a principled political decision regarding disputed issues.
Iran says it needs nuclear power to generate electricity, but Western powers led by the United States claim Tehran's eventual aim is to create nuclear weapons.