Iran FM arrives in Paris for talks

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has arrived in the French capital of Paris for a two-day visit to hold talks with the country’s senior officials.

Zarif arrived in Paris on Tuesday at the head of a high-ranking delegation on the first leg of his two-nation European tour which will also take him to the Netherlands.

The Iranian foreign minister plans to meet his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault and is likely to sit down with President Francois Hollande.

The top Iranian diplomat will hold separate talks with President of France National Assembly Claude Bartolone and Senate President Gerard Larcher.

Zarif is also scheduled to address reporters and journalists and attend an exclusive interview with the Paris-based television news channel France 24.

Negotiations with French Minister of Finance and Public Accounts Michel Sapin and Minister of Economy, Industry and the Digital Economy Emmanuel Macron are also on Zarif’s agenda.

At the end of his European tour, he will travel to Uzbekistan’s capital city, Tashkent, to participate in a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The SCO meeting will be held in Tashkent on June 23-24.

The Iranian minister has made two rounds of visits to a number of European countries over the past few months with the purpose of discussing ways to expand relations after the implementation of the nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in January.

In the first round of his tour, he visited Poland, Sweden, Finland and Latvia in late May and early June. Zarif also traveled to Norway and Germany in mid-June.

Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia – plus Germany started implementing the JCPOA on January 16.

Under the deal, all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran by the European Union, the Security Council and the US would be lifted. Iran has, in return, put some limitations on its nuclear activities.