TEHRAN: Direct talks with the United States this week on Tehran’s nuclear programme hold the key to bridging gaps in negotiations and sealing a deal, a top Iranian official said on Sunday.

The two countries will hold their first full-scale official and direct meetings in decades on Monday (today) and Tuesday in Geneva, with the route towards an eventual lifting of sanctions expected to be the main issue.

A top European Union official would also participate in the meetings, US and EU officials said.

Abbas Araqchi, a vice foreign minister who would lead the Iranian delegation, said the tete-a-tete with the United States was essential, as the negotiations were delicately poised.

The P5+1 group of permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany have long sought to reach a settlement over Iran’s nuclear programme.

But with the last round of talks in Vienna in May yielding next to no progress, there has been concern that the P5+1 process is stalling. The announcement on Saturday of the US-Iran meetings in Geneva came as a surprise, but appeared to confirm the need for secondary steps to close big gaps between Tehran and Washington’s positions.

“We have always had bilateral discussions with the United States in the margin of the P5+1 group, but since the talks have entered a serious phase, we want to have separate consultations,” Araqchi said, quoted by official IRNA news agency.

“Most of the sanctions were imposed by the US, and other countries from the P5+1 group were not involved,” he added, in a telling remark about how the US stance remained Iran’s main concern.

The US team in Geneva will be led by Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and Jake Sullivan, a top White House adviser.

The two Americans were part of a small team who through months of secret talks in Oman managed to bring Iran back to the P5+1 negotiating table last year.

Araqchi welcomed Burns’s presence, saying he hoped it would be “as positive during these negotiations” as previously.

A senior US administration official said on Saturday the Geneva talks would “give us a timely opportunity to exchange views in the context of the next P5+1 round in Vienna,” from June 16 to 20.

The talks are aimed at securing a comprehensive agreement on the Islamic republic’s nuclear activities, which the West suspects is aimed at developing weapons, but which Iran says is for peaceful purposes.

After decades of hostility, Iran and the US made the first tentative steps towards rapprochement after the election of Hassan Rouhani as Iranian president last June. Rouhani called his US counterpart Barack Obama shortly after he took office, which was followed by a meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2014