Vienna (AFP) July 8, 2015- Iran talks have now entered the “final” extension and have to conclude within 48 hours, a Western diplomat said Tuesday in Vienna.
“The talks are not ’without any deadline’ or ’open-ended’… We have just done the final extension,” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
“It’s difficult to see why and how we could go on any longer. Either this works in the next 48 hours or it doesn’t,” the envoy said.
This was echoed by a second Western diplomat, who said that the talks were “not an open-ended process”.
“We’ve given ourselves a couple more days because we think it can be done,” the second envoy said on condition of anonymity.
Earlier Tuesday Iran and the P5+1 group — the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany — effectively gave themselves until Friday to agree a deal by extending the terms of a 2013 interim accord.
An Iranian spokesman told AFP however that for his delegation, “we have no deadline.”
If US Secretary of State John Kerry, in Vienna since June 27, fails to hand over a deal by late Thursday, US lawmakers will get 60 days instead of 30 to review it, which risks further complicating its implementation.
The deal would curb Iran’s nuclear program for a decade or more in order to make any push to make nuclear weapons — it denies any such aim — virtually impossible.
In return, painful sanctions on Iran would be gradually lifted.