VIENNA, July 9. /TASS/. The text of an agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group of international mediators is at a high degree of readiness, a top-ranking Western diplomatic source told TASS on Thursday. "I would say, the agreement is 98% ready," he said.
"The situation is like the following: the sides are just to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on a number of outstanding issues," the source said. "After the ministerial meeting, much has been done and we hope for a successful completion of the somewhat protracted round."
This week, participants in the talks between Iran and the six powers (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany) failed to meet the deadline they had fixed for a comprehensive agreement. So, they extended the talks from July 7 to July 10.
"The sides have made considerable progress in the settlement of the outstanding issues," the source said. "We see that a compromise is possible on all the provisions, so, the general atmosphere by this minute is to meet the deadline and announce the deal by the end of the day."
Another source in a Western delegation also told TASS the deal could ne announced soon. "It is quite possible," the source said. "Some pages of the document have already been printed."
Talks on the Iranian nuclear dossier started in 2004 after the Western countries had accused Teheran of developing a secret military nuclear programme. Since 2006, the talks with Iran have been conducted by the P5+1 group. In 2006-2010, a number of sanction packages were imposed on Iran. In November 2013, a temporary agreement was reached to mitigate the anti-Iranian sanctions in exchange of Tehran’s liability to stop more than 5-percent enrichment uranium and to destroy its stockpiles of 20-percetn enriched nuclear materials. Considerable progress at the talks was reached in April 2015, when the sides agreed a joint comprehensive action plan on the Iranian nuclear programme.