Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Sunday in Geneva with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in the latest round of talks to reach a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program before next month’s deadline, the State Department said Thursday.
Kerry will meet with Zarif for the fourth time this year after a stop Saturday in London to meet with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.
The two men are under intense pressure to get at least the political framework of a final deal by March 24, the self-imposed deadline set by Iran and the “P5+1” group — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. Supporters of new sanctions against Iran in Congress have said they will move forward with legislation if there is no progress by that date, and a further extension of an interim deal is unlikely after June 30, the deadline for the signing of a final one.
The Kerry-Zarif meeting, which comes after preliminary talks between negotiators from both countries that began Thursday, will take place in the shadow of reports that the International Atomic Energy Agency is deadlocked in its probe of whether Iran had worked on developing nuclear weapons. The Associated Press reported Thursday that a confidential report from the U.N. agency said, “Iran has not provided any explanations” about possible past work on nuclear weapons.
Iran is expected to come clean about any past efforts to build nuclear weapons and cooperate with the international organization’s probe as a condition of a deal, which would provide Tehran with much-needed sanctions relief.
