Zarif asks US counterpart to avoid deviation from Geneva deal

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a meeting with his US counterpart John Kerry asked him to stop presentation of his personal interpretations of the Geneva agreement endorsed by Tehran and the world powers and express his views based on the facts stated in the deal. “In the meeting with his US counterpart, the Iranian foreign minister reminded John Kerry that he should cite the text of the Geneva agreement in his remarks and shouldn’t issue a fact sheet baselessly,” an informed source told reporters on the sidelines of the high-profile Munich Security Conference in Germany on Monday. Elaborating on the meeting between Zarif and Kerry in Munich on Sunday, the source said that the Iranian foreign minister had a very busy agenda and Kerry, thus, had to meet Zarif at the Iranian foreign minister’s residency at 7:00 Sunday morning. The remarks came after the western media outlets quoted a spokesperson of Kerry as saying that he had underlined Washington's harsh position against Tehran during the meeting and told Zarif that sanctions against Iran would continue. Subsequently, the Iranian Foreign Ministry rushed to reject the reports on the content of the talks between Zarif and Kerry. “The Iranian and US foreign ministers held a meeting on the sidelines of Munich security conference on Sunday on the nuclear issues and the upcoming meeting of Iran and the Group 5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France plus Germany),” a foreign ministry statement said on Sunday. It underlined that any news and media ballyhoo on the contents of the meeting and the talks between the two top diplomats are imprecise and unconfirmed. On November 24, Iran and the world powers sealed a six-month Joint Plan of Action to lay the groundwork for the full resolution of the West’s decade-old dispute with Iran over its nuclear energy program. In exchange for Tehran’s confidence-building bid to limit certain aspects of its nuclear activities, the Sextet of world powers agreed to lift some of the existing sanctions against Tehran and continue talks with the country to settle all problems between the two sides. Then after several rounds of experts talks on how to enforce the agreement, Iran and the six major world powers finalized an agreement on ways to implement the deal. On January 20, a confidential report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that Iran has halted its 20-percent enrichment activity under the Geneva deal. Hours later the US and the EU removed part of their sanctions against Tehran.