Spotlight: Iran's nuclear talks miss deadline, but negotiators say progress made

Iran's nuclear talks resumed on Wednesday in the Swiss city of Lausanne after missing the Tuesday deadline to work out a framework deal, but negotiators said progress has been made.

Racing against the time, the P5+1 group and Iran geared up the nuclear talks, striving to narrow gaps on the remaining disagreements throughout Tuesday.

However, the intensive ministerial plenary meetings were stretched from Tuesday night into 1 a.m. local time on Wednesday, missing the self-imposing deadline.

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Ali-Akbar Salehi and the U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz also met Wednesday morning as part of efforts to reach mutual understanding in the negotiations.

Iran's state news agency IRNA reported on Wednesday that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said very good progress has been made and solutions were found to most of the issues.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has hailed the Iran's nuclear talk as an "important step" towards a comprehensive deal by June 30.

All sides held comprehensive, repeated, thorough discussions on focused issues and they have narrowed their gaps to some extent, Wang told reporter Tuesday night.

Wang raised a four-point proposal for the next phase of nuclear talks, stressing it is important to give political guidance to the negotiations, to narrow down the differences, to adhere to a step-by-step approach and reciprocity, and to strive for a package solution.

Wang said the remaining key issues are linked to each other, so all parties must think creatively to work out a package solution.

The foreign minister also called on all parties to shoulder their due responsibility and obligation.

"No agreement is possible without accommodating core concerns of various parties," he said, adding that it is vital important to give play to the role of the UN Security Council.

A German delegation source said Iran and the P5+1 group, namely the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China plus Germany, have not reached a preliminary political deal at talks, but an agreement is possible if all sides demonstrate good will.

Despite denying that everything has been resolved, Washington said enough progress had been made to justify pushing past the deadline.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said on Wednesday that progress had been made between Iran and major countries over its disputed nuclear program, but that there were key issues that still needed to be addressed.

"I think we have a broad framework of understanding, but there are still some key issues that have to be worked through," he told the BBC. "Some of them are quite detailed and technical so there is still quite a lot of work to do but we are on it now and we'll keep going at it."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also told Russian media that negotiators had reached "an agreement in principle on all key aspects of the final settlement."

Lavrov has left the marathon talks and will be replaced by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has also left the talks, but he said he could return if needed.

The latest round of talks resumed last Thursday, with all foreign ministers from P5+1 countries and Iran joining the talks Sunday to further narrow down their differences.

On Nov. 24, 2013, the P5+1 group and Iran reached a first-step agreement on Iran's nuclear program, the Geneva 2013 Joint Plan of Action, which demanded Iran suspend some sensitive nuclear activities in exchange of limited sanction relief to buy time for the diplomatic effort to resolve the issue.

Since then, the negotiators have twice missed self-imposed deadlines for a final and comprehensive accord, respectively in June and November last year, and they then set March 31, 2015 as a new deadline for a political framework agreement and June 30 for the final deal, so as to pave the way for the final resolution of the long disputed Iran's nuclear issue. Endi