Second Round of Nuclear Talks between US, Iran Today

Second round of closed-door two-day nuclear negotiations between representatives from Iran and the United States are set to take place later on Tuesday in the Swiss city of Geneva.

nuclear talksIran’s Deputy Foreign Ministers Seyyed Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takht-e-Ravanchi will head the Iranian delegation.

The US negotiating team will be led by Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and Jake Sullivan, a top White House adviser. Washington has also sent Undersecretary for State Wendy Sherman to the two-day meeting. Helga Schmid, deputy to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, was also present in the first day of negotiations.

Araqchi said on Monday that the first day of discussions were held in a “positive and constructive” atmosphere.

Washington said that time was running out. “We think we’ve made progress during some rounds, but as we said coming out of the last one, we hadn’t seen enough made. We hadn’t seen enough realism, quite frankly, on the table,” said deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf.

“We know we don’t have a lot of time left. That’s why we’ve said diplomacy will intensify,” Harf said. “People need to make tough choices, but we are very focused on that July 20th time.”

The discussions come ahead of the next round of nuclear talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council scheduled for June 16-20 in the Austrian capital, Vienna.

After the Geneva talks, the Iranian negotiating team will head to Rome, Italy, for two days of talks with a Russian delegation, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

A deadline of July 20 has been set to turn a temporary deal struck in November in Geneva into a permanent agreement.

“If this does not happen, we’ll have to resort to extending the Geneva agreement for another six months so the negotiations can continue,” IRNA news agency quoted Araqchi as saying earlier Monday.