This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-talks.html

The article has changed 13 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 9 Version 10
Kerry Joins European Officials at Iran Nuclear Talks Roadblocks Remain as Officials Work Toward Iranian Nuclear Pact
(about 7 hours later)
GENEVA — With expectations of an interim nuclear deal with Iran rising, Secretary of State John Kerry cut short a Middle East trip and flew here on Friday to lead a concerted diplomatic push on what he and allies described as important issues that still needed to be resolved. GENEVA — With Secretary of State John Kerry and other ranking Western officials converging here on Friday, negotiators wrestled with the final hurdles to a landmark nuclear agreement with Iran that would temporarily freeze its nuclear program.
An agreement, which would temporarily freeze at least some of Iran’s nuclear activities in return for unspecified but limited relief of the onerous sanctions that have severely hurt the Iranian economy, would be the first such pact between Iran and major world powers in a decade. While the details, negotiated over the past two days here in Geneva, have been kept confidential, diplomats have said they will be aimed at starting a process that could gradually end Iran’s isolation in return for verifiable guarantees that its nuclear program is peaceful. But they quit shortly before midnight, still confronting several difficult issues. Among the most contentious issues during the talks have been the fate of a reactor that Iran is building near Arak, what to do about Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium and how much relief to give Iran from punishing economic sanctions.
Iranian officials have effusively praised what they call progress in the negotiations, while Iran’s major adversaries, most notably Israel, have strongly criticized any agreement that does not entirely derail the country’s increasingly sophisticated nuclear enrichment capacity. Mr. Kerry, who cut short a Middle East tour to fly to Geneva for the talks, warned that “there are important gaps that have to be closed.” But his mere presence, along with the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Russia and China, suggested that an initial deal was in reach, the first such pact between Iran and major world powers in a decade.
“There are important gaps that have to be closed,” Mr. Kerry said upon arrival in Geneva, seeking to temper rising expectations that a deal was close. As a first step, Western nations are seeking to freeze Iran’s nuclear program so that the West can conduct further negotiations without fear that Tehran is using the time to inch closer to a weapons capability.
“I want to emphasize: there is not an agreement at this point in time,” Mr. Kerry told reporters at his hotel. “There are still some important issues on the table that are unresolved.” “I want to emphasize: There is not an agreement at this point in time,” Mr. Kerry told reporters before plunging into meetings, including one with Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. “There are still some important issues on the table that are unresolved.”
But the mere fact of Mr. Kerry’s presence here suggested that the United States believed that a deal was within reach, and that it required higher-level participation to resolve the remaining issues. After Mr. Kerry’s meetings had ended, a senior State Department official said: “We continued to make progress as we worked to the narrow the gaps. There is more work to do. The meetings will resume tomorrow morning.”
Mr. Kerry was meeting on Friday evening with Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, who oversees the multiparty negotiations. The major powers are demanding that Iran mothball the nuclear plant, a heavy-water reactor to produce plutonium that is scheduled for completion next summer, experts say. Once the reactor becomes operational, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the West to disable it by military means for fear of igniting the plutonium, a component of nuclear weapons.
Before that, he held separate meetings with Ms. Ashton; the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius; and the British foreign secretary, William Hague, as the major powers coordinated their own bargaining positions. The German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, also joined the push for an agreement. “Once the reactor starts, any hostile action will have environmental consequences, “ said Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. “Thus the construction should be stopped at the front end of any agreement to pave the way for a long-term solution.
The State Department’s spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said in a statement that Mr. Kerry was in Geneva “in an effort to help narrow the differences in the negotiations.” As a possible compromise, experts say, Iran might agree to refrain from starting up the plant for the six months of an interim agreement, while continuing some work on the installation.
Mr. Fabius told reporters soon after arriving here on Friday that progress had been made during the latest round of talks with Iranian diplomats, which began on Thursday, but added, “Nothing is hard and fast yet.” Iran has made clear it has no intention of suspending the enrichment of low-enriched uranium, either under an interim agreement or as part of a comprehensive accord.
“We are working to reach an accord which completes the first step to respond to Iran’s nuclear program,” he said. But American officials still want to curb Iran’s ability to make a bomb in a matter of months. This could be done by banning Iran from enriching uranium to 20 percent and arranging for Iran to covert its current stock of such uranium into oxide form, which is harder to convert to weapons grade. Such a step, many experts say, would be more effective if it was also coupled with constraints on the number and type of centrifuges Iran is permitted to retain.
American officials have described the deal as an opening move that would halt the progress in Iran’s nuclear program for perhaps six months to give negotiators time to pursue a more comprehensive agreement. In return, the United States would relax some financial sanctions. “If there aren’t more constraints put on the Iranian centrifuge program, then you haven’t accomplished very much at all,” David Albright, the president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said on a recent conference call organized by the Israel Project, a nonprofit organization.
Expectations that the world powers were about to conclude a preliminary accord with Iran have angered Israel and some Arab states. American officials are believed to have sought a commitment by Iran that it would not operate sophisticated centrifuges, known as IR-2’s, or install new ones. Banning Iran from manufacturing additional centrifuges of all types would also slow Iran’s progress toward a bomb, but Mr. Albright said it might not be part of the Obama administration’s proposal.
Mr. Kerry met in Israel on Friday for more than two hours with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before flying to Geneva. To induce Iran to halt its program, the United States is proposing freeing up billion dollars in Iranian funds that have been frozen in banks overseas, and could be given to Iran in installments in return for concessions. But on Friday, an Iranian negotiator said Iran expected relief from sweeping sanctions against its oil and banking industries.
Afterward, Mr. Netanyahu delivered a blistering statement that accused the United States of rushing into a deal that would do little to reduce Iran’s nuclear efforts while alleviating the economic pressure on Tehran. “We have announced to the West that in the first phase the issue of banking and oil sanctions must be considered,” said the representative, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.
“The deal that is being discussed in Geneva right now is a bad deal,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Iran is not required to take apart even one centrifuge. But the international community is relieving sanctions on Iran for the first time after many years.” Mr. Takht-Ravanchi is a seasoned diplomat, but his statement seemed out of character for an Iranian delegation that has worked hard to raise expectations for an agreement.
“I urge Secretary Kerry not to rush to sign, to wait, to reconsider, to get a good deal,” Mr. Netanyahu added. In any event, the broader sanctions can only be lifted with congressional approval, a lengthy and political difficult process, given the strong sentiment among lawmakers to keep the pressure on Iran. The Senate, in fact, is considering additional sanctions, and only agreed to put the bill on hold briefly to avoid disrupting the initial rounds of talks.
Mr. Kerry was adamant during his visit to Israel this week that the West would not rush into a deal with Iran. In a joint interview with Israeli and Palestinian journalists on Thursday, he said, “I have said many times we will not make a deal that’s a bad deal, that leaves any of our friends or ourselves exposed to a nuclear weapons program.” News of a potential agreement prompted several Republican lawmakers to express concern that the major powers were about to reward Iran without removing its nuclear capabilities. Their criticism followed a blistering denunciation of the potential deal by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
The United States, Mr. Kerry said, also would not dismantle its sanctions until it had “absolute clarity about what is happening.” Administration officials said a more likely option would be for the West to free some Iranian assets that are frozen in overseas banks. “The agreement would leave Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in place while undermining the sanctions pressure we worked so hard to build,” said Sen. Mark S. Kirk, an Illinois Republican and Iran hawk. “In short, it will increase the likelihood of war when we should be doing all we can to achieve a peaceful outcome.”
But Iranian officials have made it clear that Tehran intends to preserve its right to enrich uranium as part of an interim understanding and also a final deal. Israel has argued that Iran’s ability to enrich uranium needs to be eliminated to ensure that it does not maintain the option to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has said its nuclear program is for civilian energy purposes only. Representative Ed Royce, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he would hold hearings on the negotiations with Iran to coincide with the 100th day since the election of Hassan Rouhani as president of Iran — the political change that opened the door to the most serious diplomacy in a decade.
There was no indication that foreign ministers from Russia or China, the other members of the so-called P5-plus-1 nations — the world powers involved in the talks — were planning to attend. “Instead of toughening sanctions to get meaningful and lasting concessions, the Obama administration looks to be settling for interim and reversible steps,” Mr. Royce said in a statement. “A partial freeze of enrichment, as we’re hearing, is not a freeze.”
While Iran was a major topic of discussion between Mr. Kerry and Mr. Netanyahu, the secretary of state also went to Israel to press the prime minister on negotiations with the Palestinians, which he tried to reinvigorate in several days of shuttle diplomacy. If Mr. Kerry succeeds in closing an interim deal, one of his first orders of business is likely to be lobbying his former colleagues in the Senate to support the agreement and to hold off on new sanctions. Mr. Kerry had planned to visit Algeria and Morocco, but he has postponed those visits to return to Washington by early next week.
Mr. Kerry met with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in Amman, Jordan, on Thursday evening. Mr. Abbas has complained that Israel is continuing to approve settlement construction in the West Bank, poisoning the atmosphere for direct negotiations. One stop Mr. Kerry has retained is Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, where he is scheduled to meet the crown prince, Mohammed bin Zayed. Abu Dhabi, like other Persian Gulf states, is worried about the specter of a nuclear Iran and has been alarmed by the reports of a potential deal.
But Mr. Netanyahu said Wednesday that the Palestinians were inciting discord and manufacturing crises to avoid making difficult decisions in the negotiations. Mr. Kerry got a taste of the political storm any deal is likely to stir up earlier on Friday when he met in Tel Aviv with Mr. Netanyahu. The Israeli leader derided the potential agreement as the “deal of the century” for Iran and said Israel rejected it unequivocally.
On Friday, he appeared to harden his stance further, telling reporters: “I will never compromise on Israel’s security and our vital interests, not in the face of any international pressure. I think the pressure has to be put where it belongs. That is, on the Palestinians who refuse to budge.”
At times this week, Mr. Kerry has appeared frustrated with the Israelis. On Wednesday, he appealed to the Israeli authorities to keep a lid on new settlement construction during the negotiations.
In his interview with Israeli and Palestinian journalists, Mr. Kerry used unusually pointed language in prodding the Israelis. “The alternative to getting back to the talks is the potential of chaos,” he said. “I mean, does Israel want a third intifada?”

Michael R. Gordon reported from Geneva, and Mark Landler from Tel Aviv. Jodi Rudoren contributed reporting from Jerusalem.