The third round of the nuclear talks between Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry started in the Swiss town of Lausanne on Friday.
The third round of the nuclear talks between Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry started in the Swiss town of Lausanne on Friday.
President Rouhani's Special Envoy Hussein Fereydoun, Head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi, US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, deputies to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takht-e-Ravanchi, US Assistant Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, and EU Foreign Policy Deputy Chief Helga Schmidt are present in the meeting.
Deputy foreign ministers of Iran and the 5+1 member states had a public session here on Thursday night.
Foreign ministry deputies Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takht Ravanchi were representing Iran in the session.
Zarif arrived in Geneva Wednesday night to hold a new round of talks with his American counterpart in Lausanne on Thursday.
The new round of nuclear talks started on Thursday March 26 in Lausanne and continues until Sunday.
Speaking to reporters in Tehran on Wednesday, Zarif said the negotiating team persists on the elimination of all sanctions, and would make maximum efforts for the next round of talks in Lausanne.
For his part, Araqchi said, "We reached a common understanding, not an agreement, about a considerable group of issues."
Meanwhile, Kerry has also defended US policy to continue nuclear negotiations with Iran, saying if Washington walks away from the talks, the sanctions against the Islamic Republic will not hold.
Speaking on Wednesday morning to senior US diplomats in Washington, Kerry said, “Anybody standing up in opposition to this [Iran talks] has an obligation to stand up and put a viable realistic alternative on the table. And I have yet to see anybody do that.”
He warned critics that a failure of the nuclear talks with Tehran would lead to the collapse of the current sanctions regime against the country.
The talks between the US and Iran are part of broader negotiations between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 group -- Russia, China, Britain, France and the US plus Germany -- to reach a comprehensive agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program as a deadline slated for July 1 draws closer.
The scale of Iran’s uranium enrichment and the timetable for the lifting of anti-Iran sanctions are seen as major sticking points in the talks.
The illegal sanctions on Iran have been imposed based on the unfounded accusation that Tehran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.
Iran rejects the allegation, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
