Iran says nuclear talks 'very slow and difficult'

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, Iranian FM Javad Zarif and ambassador Hassan Tajik Iran's lead negotiator in high-stakes nuclear talks with world powers in Vienna said Friday that discussions were moving forward only "very slowly and with difficulty". "It's a good atmosphere and discussions are moving forward in a spirit of goodwill, but they are moving very slowly and with difficulty," the IRNA news agency quoted Abbas Araqchi as saying.
The comments came as a fourth round of talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany neared its scheduled end in the rainy Austrian capital.
The negotiators aim to nail down an exceedingly complex lasting accord limiting Iran's nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of sanctions by the time a November interim deal expires on July 20.
- Drafting an actual deal -
Failure could have calamitous consequences, potentially sparking conflict -- neither Israel nor Washington rules out military action -- and creating a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
Negotiators could in theory extend the July 20 deadline to win more time, but Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani could struggle to keep sceptical and impatient US and Iranian hardliners at bay.
After three rounds that Washington said helped both sides to "understand each other's positions", the United States and Iran have said this time they wanted to start drafting the actual agreement.
Even though there have been indications of some narrowing of positions, for example on the Arak reactor, both sides are sticking to the mantra that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
The biggest issue and main sticking point is uranium enrichment, a process making uranium suitable for peaceful uses like power generation but also, when highly enriched, for a bomb.
Multiple UN Security Council resolutions have called on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, as has the UN atomic agency's board of governors.
The powers want to extend the time Iran would need to enrich its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to weapons-grade by slashing the number of centrifuges from the current 20,000, of which half are operating.
The Islamic republic denies wanting nuclear weapons, saying it needs the enriched uranium to fuel a fleet of nuclear reactors that it is years away from having, and other peaceful uses.
- Ballistic missiles -
"Even with just a few thousand first generation (IR-1) centrifuges... Iran would have more than sufficient capacity for its foreseeable 'practical' nuclear power reactor fuel needs," said Daryl Kimball from the Arms Control Association.
Iran is also developing faster centrifuges that a spokesman in Tehran said Wednesday could enrich 15 times faster and which are undergoing "final mechanical testing".
Another problem issue is Iran's development of ballistic missiles, something which Tehran has said should not be part of the nuclear talks.
Washington disagrees, saying that the November deal committed Iran to address all UN Security Council resolutions, one of which -- passed in 2010 -- called on Iran to stop missile development.
Also to be resolved is the International Atomic Energy Agency's long-stalled probe into alleged past "military dimensions" to its programme before 2003 and possibly since.
A Thursday deadline for Iran to clear up one small part of this -- its stated need for certain detonators -- passed without comment from either the IAEA or Iran.
After a meeting on Monday, a terse IAEA statement said only that it had "noted that Iran has taken several actions and that some related work continues."
"This is hard. This is difficult. If it weren’t difficult, it would have been resolved a long time ago," a senior US official said at the start of the talks.
Source: AFP