’Tough challenges’ remain in Iran nuclear talks: US

AFP – 4 March 2015 – The United States said Wednesday tough challenges remained to seal a nuclear deal with Iran, vowing not to be distracted by external politics in its quest to stop Tehran acquiring the atomic bomb.
Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif wrapped up three days of “intense” nuclear negotiations in the Swiss lakeside town of Montreux with still no deal, as a March 31 deadline for a framework agreement looms.
“We’ve made some progress from where we were and important choices need to be made,” Kerry told reporters after the talks, with a senior State Department official adding that “tough challenges” had yet to be resolved.
Speaking a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stridently criticized an agreement he said would not stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, Kerry stressed that the purpose of negotiations was to “get the right deal, one that can withstand scrutiny”.
Netanyahu warned in his dramatic speech to the US Congress Tuesday that an agreement that was “supposed to prevent nuclear proliferation would instead spark a nuclear arms race in the most dangerous part of the planet.”
Kerry said world powers negotiating with Iran wanted “an agreement that is sustainable over time particularly that achieves the singular goal of proving that Iran’s nuclear programme is and will remain peaceful”.
Kerry will now fly to Riyadh to brief US Gulf allies on the emerging deal and plans to meet in Paris on Saturday with his British, French and German counterparts.
P5+1 talks at political director level will continue in Montreux on Thursday.
The next two-way talks between Iran and the United States will be held on March 15, most likely in Geneva, although the venue has not been confirmed.
“Until you have all the pieces put in place, it’s the old Rubik’s Cube,” said the State Department official, who wished to remain anonymous. “Until that last piece locks in place nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”
US officials insist that even if there is a nuclear deal with Iran that does not mean they will turn a blind eye to the other activities of the country, still branded by Washington as the number one state sponsor of terrorism.
“Regardless of what happens with the nuclear file, we will continue to confront aggressively Iranian expansion in the region, Iranian aggressiveness in the region,” another State Department official said.