U.S.: 'Timely' Chance to Boost Iran Nuclear Talks
Direct bilateral talks between Iran and the United States will be "a timely opportunity" to try to advance a nuclear deal with world powers, a U.S. official told Agence France Presse on Saturday.
"These consultations come at an important juncture of the negotiations," the senior administration official said just after both sides announced that surprise talks would take place next week in Geneva.
The bilateral talks come at a crunch time as Iran and the six world powers try to hammer out a difficult comprehensive treaty to rein in Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
An interim six-month deal, under which the U.S. and its partners released some $7 billion frozen by tough sanctions in return for a slowdown in Iran's controversial uranium enrichment program, expires on July 20.
And the last round of talks in Vienna, during which all sides had hoped to start drawing up the pact, ended with little progress.
The bilateral talks "will give us a timely opportunity to exchange views in the context of the next P5+ 1 round in Vienna," the official added, asking not to be named.
Significantly, the U.S. delegation is to be led by Deputy Secretary Bill Burns and will include top White House advisor Jake Sullivan.
Both men were part of a tiny team who led many months of top secret negotiations with Iran in Oman in a bid to relaunch the stalled nuclear negotiations.
"We believe we need to engage in as much active diplomacy as we can to test whether we can reach a diplomatic solution with Iran on its nuclear program," the official told AFP.
But the official insisted that the talks on Monday and Tuesday in Geneva would not be negotiations, but "consultations to feed into the P5+1 process."
The nuclear negotiations to rein in Tehran's nuclear ambitions are being led by the five nuclear powers and Germany with Iran under the auspices of EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
The direct Iran-U.S. talks "are not a substitute for the P5+1 process, nor are they intended to establish a parallel track with Iran," the official insisted.
"We, like other P5+1 states, see value in having bilateral consultations with Iran given our shared interest in reaching a comprehensive agreement to ensure the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program."
The official confirmed that there was no intention to raise other issues such as the war in Syria during the talks in Geneva.
It was also "natural" for Burns and Sullivan "to join the delegation for this meeting given their history of negotiating with Iran during the Joint Plan of Action talks."
Source: Agence France Presse
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