LAUSANNE: Marathon talks aimed at putting an Iranian nuclear bomb out of reach broke up on Friday without a breakthrough, with negotiators opting to try again next week to narrow still major differences.

That will leave Iran and six major powers just one week to meet a March 31 deadline for agreeing the outlines of a deal that they hope will end a 12-year standoff.

“Right now more consultation and coordination is needed,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said, adding that the next round would begin on Wednesday, although where the talks would be held was unclear.

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After five days of “intensive discussions” US Secretary of State John Kerry will leave Switzerland on Saturday for talks in London with his British, French and German counterparts, the State Department said.

“(Given) where we are in the negotiations, it’s an important time for high-level consultations with our partners in these talks,” spokeswoman Marie Harf in Lausanne.

On Friday Kerry spoke by phone with the foreign ministers of Russia and China, the other two powers involved in talks that first began in earnest after the 2013 election of Iranian President Hasan Rouhani.

French President Francois Hollande, who earlier Friday discussed the Iran talks with German and British counterparts Angela Merkel and David Cameron, said he would talk with US President Barack Obama later on Friday.Overnight Obama appealed in a Nowruz (Persian New Year) address to the Iranian “people and leaders” to seize an “historic” opportunity and begin a “brighter future”.

“I believe that our nations have an historic opportunity to resolve this issue peacefully — an opportunity we should not miss,” Obama said.

In an apparent response, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who has been locked in talks with Kerry in Lausanne all week, said it was the other side that had to budge.

“Iranians have already made their choice: engage with dignity. It’s high time for the US and its allies to chose: pressure or agreement,” Zarif wrote in a message posted on his official Twitter account.

“Nowruz is the beginning of spring, and in Farsi, it means ‘new day’. I hope this new day will be a new day for the entire world — a new era of greater understanding and peace,” Zarif told Kerry.The highly complex mooted agreement, due to be finalised by July, is aimed at convincing the world that Iran will not build nuclear weapons under the guise of its civilian programme.

Published in Dawn March 21st , 2015

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