Iran, P5+1 face daunting task in Vienna N-talks: Iranian diplomat

Representatives of Iran and the P5+1 group face “the daunting task” of narrowing their differences in the upcoming nuclear talks in the Austrian capital city of Vienna.

Experts from Iran and the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany – aka P5+1 – on Thursday ended their latest round of talks in New York, which were held on the sidelines of the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), said Hamid Baeidinejad, who also serves as the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s director general for political affairs.

In this round of the negotiations in New York, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif held important talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, Baeidinejad added in a message on his Instagram account.

The official also noted that the two sides held nine days of deputy-level and eleven days of expert-level talks, adding that this round of negotiations took some 200 hours in total.

The next round of negotiations is aimed at reducing the gaps and agreeing on issues of difference, Baeidinejad said.

The two sides are set to start the next round of four-day talks on Tuesday in Vienna at deputy and expert levels, he said.

The senior negotiator added that Iran and the P5+1 countries held “good and useful” talks, particularly on drafting a final nuclear deal, adding that there are still many gaps to deal with.

Iran and the P5+1 group reached a mutual understanding on Tehran’s nuclear program in the Swiss city of Lausanne on April 2.

They agreed to finalize a comprehensive deal on Tehran’s nuclear program by the end of June.