Lausanne--Tortuous negotiations aimed at laying to rest fears that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons moved into top gear Saturday with each side demanding the other give ground ahead of a looming deadline.
"We're at that point in the negotiations where we really need to see decisions being made," a senior US State Department official said late Friday at the talks in Lausanne, Switzerland.
"The work is very complicated and difficult. The other side needs to choose between pressure and a political accord," countered Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
France's top diplomat Laurent Fabius, the most hawkish in the P5+1 group of countries negotiating with Iran since late 2013, was the first European minister to fly in for the crucial talks saying he wanted to reach a "robust deal".
France was "insisting" that any deal included mechanisms to ensure that the Islamic republic, which denies wanting nuclear weapons, complies with its commitments, he said.
Fabius will join US Secretary of State John Kerry, Zarif and negotiators from the six powers, chasing an agreement on the broad outlines of what they hope will be a historic deal by Tuesday.
Since a major diplomatic push to resolve the long-running crisis began in 2013, Kerry and the US-educated Zarif have met multiple times, but have twice missed a deadline to nail down an accord.
The powers want Iran to shrink its nuclear programme in order to make it easy to detect any dash to make a bomb under the guise of its civilian atomic programme.
In return, Iran wants an easing of international sanctions that have excluded the Islamic republic from lucrative oil markets and crippled its economy.
AFP
