The White House on Wednesday said it is open to again extending talks aimed at rolling back Iran’s nuclear weapon program as long as negotiations continue to make progress.
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“The approach that we demonstrated yesterday is one that we will continue to demonstrate,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the White House announced that talks would continue beyond the March 31 deadline into Wednesday because the U.S. and its five international partners — France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia and China — believe negotiations were continuing to be productive.
Before Tuesday, the White House and the State Department insisted that the end of March was a “real deadline.”
Earnest said U.S. officials briefed President Obama on the status of the negotiations earlier Wednesday.
“The sense that we have is that the talks continue to be productive and progress continues to be made,” he said. “We’ve been at this for more than a year now and the time has come for Iranian negotiators to begin to make the commitments that the U.S. and the international community will insist on.”
Speaking broadly, Earnest said the international community will demand that Iran shut down every path to a nuclear weapon and cooperate on an intrusive set of inspections.
“We have not yet received the specific tangible commitments that the international community seeks,” he said.
