Talks between Iran and West end without nuclear deal
Prospect of Saturday signing scuppered by France’s insistence on harsher terms; sides to meet again in Geneva on November 20By Times of Israel staff and AP November 10, 2013, 1:28 am
http://www.timesofisrael.com/talks-between-iran-and-the-west-continue-into-the-night/Talks in Geneva between world powers and Iran ended early Sunday morning without a deal on Iran’s rogue nuclear program, after hitting a snag on Saturday when France questioned the terms of a proposed agreement. The sides agreed to meet again in Geneva on November 20, but at the level of “political directors” rather than foreign ministers.
France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the talks had managed to narrow differences without eliminating them and that there were still questions to be dealt with in future rounds.
“From the start, France wanted an agreement to the important question of Iran’s nuclear program,” he said, according to Sky News. “The Geneva meeting allowed us to advance, but we were not able to conclude because there are still some questions to be addressed.”
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton also said a lot of progress had been made. At a joint press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Ashton said, “We’re not going into the details of our discussions but I pay tribute to all the ministers, including Laurent Fabius’s attempt to try and help support this process.”
Ashton appeared more disappointed than Zarif that the marathon negotiations had failed to yield an agreement. A relaxed and smiling Zarif, indeed, said it was “natural that when we start dealing with the details there would be differences of views, and we expected that.”
He said he was “not disappointed at all” that a final deal had proved elusive, and asked directly whether he attributed the failure to France, chose not to assign blame. He said he had been hoping to find “the political will to end this” nuclear standoff, and said, “I think we’re all on the same wavelength.” This would give the sides the “impetus” to move forward next time — “something to build on,” he said. If there weren’t differences, he added, smiling again, the sides would not have needed to meet.
Chances of bridging all differences appeared to diminish as the day went on, but efforts continued until after midnight. The foreign ministers of the P5+1 delegations held a last-ditch meeting late Saturday, and were later joined by Zarif, in an apparent effort to salvage the talks.
Zarif earlier held a reported five-hour trilateral meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry and Ashton over the contents of a draft agreement.
The Iranian foreign minister also held meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ashton, after which Lavrov and Kerry also met.
Israel lobbied hard against the deal on Saturday, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz reported to have spoken to representatives of some of the P5+1 nations. US President Barack Obama called Netanyahu on Friday after the prime minister publicly castigated the emerging deal as “very, very bad” and “dangerous” and said he had pleaded with Kerry not to sign it. Netanyahu also spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Fabius said earlier that Tehran was resisting demands that it suspend work on a plutonium-producing reactor and downgrade its stockpile of higher-enriched uranium to a level that cannot quickly be turned into the core of an atomic bomb. His remarks to France-Inter radio were the first to provide some specifics on the obstacles at the Geneva talks.
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