Iran nuclear talks to miss June 30 final deal deadline

VIENNA: Iran and the US admitted during tense talks on Sunday they are highly likely to miss a looming deadline to nail down a historic nuclear deal as they struggled to overcome major differences.

Officials in Vienna said however that Tuesday’s target date would only be missed by a few days, with Iran saying there was “no desire or discussion yet” on a longer extension. A senior US official would not go as far as to say there was no chance of meeting the deadline, but said “it’s fair to say the parties are planning to stay past the 30th to keep negotiating”. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif meanwhile was set to return to Tehran for consultations, officials said, although the US official said this was not a matter of concern.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said as he joined the talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry and other foreign ministers that the six powers were prepared to walk away.

“No deal is better than a bad deal. There are red lines that we cannot cross and some very difficult decisions and tough choices are going to have to be made by all of us,” Hammond told reporters.

EU foreign policy head Federica Mogherini said “political will” was still needed to get a deal after almost two years of intense diplomatic efforts to resolve the 13-year-old standoff. “It is going to be tough, it has always been tough but not impossible,” Mogherini told reporters. Iran and the P5+1 group -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- are seeking to flesh out the final details of an accord that builds on a framework deal reached in Lausanne in April.

According to the Lausanne framework, Iran will slash the number of its uranium enrichment centrifuges, which can make nuclear fuel but also the core of a bomb, shrink its uranium stockpile and change the design of the Arak reactor.

In return it is seeking a lifting of a complicated web of EU, US and UN sanctions which have choked its economy and limited access to world oil markets. But tough remaining issues include the timing and pace of this sanctions relief and UN access to Iranian military bases to investigate any suspicious behaviour.