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Intensive consultations continue almost non-stop in Vienna: Russia

Thursday, 17 February 2022 7:17 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 17 February 2022 7:32 AM ]

Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov holds talks with US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley in the Austrian capital, on February 16, 2022. (Via Twitter)

Russia’s lead negotiator says the intensive negotiations in Vienna, aimed at putting the 2015 Iran agreement back on track and lifting US sanctions, go on “almost non-stop.”

“Intensive consultations continue almost non-stop in the course of the #ViennaTalks on #JCPOA,” Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov tweeted on Wednesday, referring to the deal by the acronym of its official name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

He posted a picture of his meeting with US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley in the Austrian capital.

Also on Wednesday, Iran’s top negotiator Ali Baqeri-Kani said in a tweet that it is time for the negotiating partners in Vienna to take “serious decisions.”

Ulyanov replied, “I agree. It is high time to make final decisions at the #ViennaTalks on #JCPOA.”

Iran: Time for negotiating partners to take ‘serious decisions’

Iran’s top negotiator says the ball is in the other side’s court to make the negotiations work by taking “serious decisions.”

On Tuesday, the Russian diplomat said he had discussed with European Union deputy foreign policy chief Enrique Mora “the state of affairs at the current and apparently final stage” of the Vienna negotiations.

Washington left the JCPOA in 2018 and began to implement what it called the “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions against the Islamic Republic, depriving the country of the economic benefits of the aggrement, including the removal of sanctions, for which Iran had agreed to certain caps on its nuclear activities.

In the meantime, the other parties to the deal, in particular France, Britain and Germany, only paid lip service to safeguarding Iran’s economic dividends as promised under the JCPOA, prompting Iran – after an entire year of “strategic patience” – to reduce its nuclear obligations in a legal move under the deal.

The Vienna talks began last April on the assumption that the US, under the Joe Biden administration, is willing to repeal the so-called maximum pressure policy pursued by former president Donald Trump.

Tehran says it won’t settle for anything less than the removal of all US sanctions in a verifiable manner. It also wants guarantees that Washington would not abandon the agreement again.

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