#presents #final #text #Iran #nuclear #talks
The European Union has presented a “final text” at talks to salvage a 2015 deal aimed at reining in Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and Tehran said on Monday it was reviewing the proposals.
Britain, China, France, Germany, Iran and Russia, and indirectly the United States, resumed talks in Vienna on Thursday, months after they stalled.
The European Union has presented a “final text,” an EU official said on Monday. “We worked four days and today the text is on the table,” the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
“Negotiations are complete, it is the final text… and it will not be renegotiated.”
“Now the ball is in the capitals’ court and we’ll see what happens,” added the European official. “No one stays in Vienna.”
The official said he hoped the “high quality” text would be adopted “within weeks”.
Iran said it is reviewing the 25-page document.
“Once we received these ideas, we submitted our initial reaction and considerations,” state news agency IRNA quoted an unnamed State Department official as saying.
“But of course these points require a full review and we will share our additional views and considerations.”
On Sunday, Iran asked the UN nuclear watchdog to “fully clarify” questions about nuclear material at undeclared sites.
Iranian sources have suggested that a key sticking point was an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation into trace amounts of nuclear material found at undeclared Iranian sites.
“This has nothing to do with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement, the EU official said.
“I hope that Iran and the IAEA will reach an agreement because it will make many things easier.”
– ‘Irrelevant and unconstructive’ –
The UN agency’s board of governors passed a resolution in June chiding Iran for failing to adequately explain the earlier discovery of trace amounts of enriched uranium at three previously undeclared sites.
“We believe that the agency should solve the remaining security problems entirely through technical means, distancing itself from irrelevant and unconstructive political issues,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Sunday.
Arms Control Association expert Kelsey Davenport warned against abandoning the IAEA probe to revive the JCPOA, which she called “the most effective way to demonstrably block Iran’s pathways to nuclear weapons.”
Failure by the United States and other signatories to the 2015 accord to support the UN body will “undermine the agency’s mandate” and broader non-proliferation goals, she wrote on Twitter.
EU-coordinated negotiations to revive the JCPOA began in April 2021 before stalling in March.
The 2015 deal gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program to ensure Tehran could not develop nuclear weapons – something it has always denied wanting to do so.
But the United States’ unilateral withdrawal from the deal under President Donald Trump in 2018 and the re-imposition of harsh economic sanctions prompted Iran to backtrack on its own commitments.
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