Roundup: Iran says nuclear deal should benefit all parties

Iran is seeking a kind of agreement in nuclear talks which will meet the interests of all the parties concerned, Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Ali-Akbar Salehi, was quoted as saying by official IRNA news agency on Sunday.

The path for a comprehensive deal is "very complicated with many ups and downs," Salehi said, expressing hope for "a win-win" result for the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 group -- the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia plus Germany.

He said the two sides have taken good steps so far, stressing that Iran should exercise "patience, vigilance and wisdom" in the negotiations underway.

Besides, the spokesman for the AEOI, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said Sunday that the settlement of technical issues in the nuclear talks will accelerate progress towards a nuclear deal, Press TV reported.

The presence of Salehi and U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in the recent round of nuclear talks has sped up the trend of negotiations aimed at a permanent nuclear accord, Kamalvandi was quoted as saying.

Salehi and Moniz joined the recent high level nuclear talks between Iran and the U.S. in Switzerland recently to discuss the technical details along with other issues relevant to Iran's nuclear program.

Following the Feb. 22 talks in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also held a three-day discussion with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad-Javad Zarif in Montreux earlier last week.

"Technically speaking, good progress has been made," Kamalvandi said, adding that however, nuclear talks are not confined to purely technical aspects and that "there are also legal and political issues."

On Saturday, Salehi said technical problems over Iran's nuclear program were removed in the talks between Iran and the U.S..

"We had faced a kind of deadlock in the negotiations over the technical issues," Salehi told state IRIB TV, adding that however, in the last two rounds of negotiations, "talks were very useful and we took good steps."

He did not spell out the details of the talks over the technical issues, but he said "we proposed some technical ways to help remove the other party's concerns."

The uranium enrichment activities of Iran, Arak heavy water plant, research and development activities of Iran in nuclear field and underground Fordow uranium enrichment facilities were on the agenda of the talks between Iran and the United Sates, Salehi said.

The Iranian delegation to the talks has been able to defend the national interests and the nuclear rights of the country as well as the achievements of the nuclear industry, he said.

Both sides said that there was progress in the talks but some differences still remained over some issues.

China urges all parties to work together to facilitate a political decision on the Iran nuclear issue as negotiations reach a crucial juncture, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Sunday.

We can already see "the light at the end of the tunnel," despite some uncertainty still clouding over the prospect of the negotiations, Wang said at a press conference on the sidelines of China's annual parliamentary session.

Under an interim deal inked in November 2013, Iran said it would suspend critical nuclear activities in return for a limited ease of sanctions.

After missing self-imposed deadlines twice, the negotiators agreed in November 2014 to extend the deadline for another seven months, hoping to reach a deal, which could be one of the most important and divisive international agreements in decades. Endit