BRUSSELS, June 23 (KUNA) -- EU Political Director Helga Schmid and Iranian Deputy Foreign Ministers Abbas Araghchi and Madjid Takht Ravanchi were meeting again in Vienna Tuesday to complete work on a comprehensive, long-term solution to the Iranian nuclear issue within the agreed timeframe.
They will be joined by Political Directors of the G5+1 later this week, according to a statement released here today. Technical experts from the P5+1 and Iran are continuing to meet in parallel to reach agreement on the technical annexes, which will form part of any comprehensive agreement, noted the statement by the EU's foreign service, known as the European External Action Service.
This follows a political meeting in Luxembourg yesterday between the three EU foreign ministers - Franz-Walter Stenmeier, of Germany, Laurent Fabius, of France, and Philip Hammond, of the UK, and the Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.
Zarif told reporters after the Luxembourg talks, chaired by EU High Representative Federica Mogherini, that "the next days will be very intensive, there is a political commitment on the part of the everyone to move forward and I believe that this political will to accept the realities and move forward based on that we agreed in Laussane, so there is good possibilities that we can finish this." On his part Hammond told reporters after the Luxembourg meeting that "we all want to see a robust and verifiable deal with Iran that insures that its nuclear programme in the future is exclusively civil." "We need to work towards the June 30 deadline next week. We are making progress at official level, at some point, maybe early next week ministers will need to gather and get involved. We will carry on making progress as far as we can," he said.
"We have said many times before, we cannot compromise on the absolute red lines we have. If we do a deal, it has to be verifiable, there is a lack of trust in both sides and only full verification is going to start to regenerate that trust in the future," added the British official. (end) nk.gb