Brussels, 02/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - Although an agreement was hoped for by 31 March, negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme continued on 1-2 April, in bilateral and multilateral meetings. As EUROPE went to press, little information had filtered through, but no agreement had yet been announced.
The talks will take as long as they need, the head of the Iranian negotiation team, Abbas Araghchi, had warned on Wednesday 1 April. “We are not going to allow ourselves to be dictated to by time”, he said, adding that “time is important to us, but the content of the negotiations and our demands are more important”.
On Thursday 2 April, the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, announced that there had been “significant progress”, but still no “end result”. “What we expect at this stage is we hope to set out parameters of resolutions for the issues that need to be resolved in order to write, draft and hopefully agree on a comprehensive plan of action which would be a final programme”, the minister added. He told Reuters that he hoped to be able to conclude before the end of the day on 2 April. Later that day, he said that “solutions were within reach”, but “no statement is prepared yet. We haven't reached the end”, he added. “We are making a good deal of progress, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel”, the Iranian head of technical issues, Ali Akhbar Salehi, said on 2 April.
“We are a few metres, or maybe a few dozen metres, from the finishing line. But as everybody knows, it's always the last few metres that are the hardest”, said the French minister, Laurent Fabius. He went on to say that there were “still a few points on which progress is required, particularly on the Iranian side”. (Camille-Cerise Gessant)