VIENNA: The United States and Iran were making “a genuine” effort to overcome the toughest hurdles still blocking a deal to curtail the Iranian nuclear programme, top US diplomat John Kerry said on Friday.

As he met once again with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif in the Austrian capital, Kerry insisted that while difficult issues remained they were making progress ahead of a new Tuesday deadline for an accord to put a nuclear bomb out of Iran’s reach.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s chief of staff, Mohammad Nahavandian, was meanwhile headed to the negotiations in Vienna, in what the official IRNA news agency called a “special mission”.

“We have some tough issues, but there’s been a genuine effort by everybody to be serious about this and to understand the time constraints that we’re working under,” Kerry said.

Global powers are trying to draw the curtain on almost two years of negotiations, which gathered new impetus after Rouhani took power in late 2013.

A deal would end a 13-year standoff with Iran over its suspect nuclearprogramme.

But Kerry is also under pressure to send any deal to the US Congress by July 9 to give them 30 days to review it.

If the deal is reached after July 9, the Republican-controlled body will have 60 days to vote to approve or disapprove of the deal.

The teams were working “very diligently all day in order to maximise progress” and with “a great sense of purpose,” Kerry said.

Many of the ministers from the negotiating global powers — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — are due back in Vienna on Sunday.

“We’re all trying very hard in order to be able to move forward and we have made some progress,” Zarif said.

“There are still tough issues to discuss and to resolve but I think, with political will, we will. “Ahead of the deadline, the chief negotiators of Iran, the United States and the European Union haggled for six hours until 3am early on Friday, a senior US official said.

“It feels like the end,” said one western diplomat. “The technical work is advancing on the main text, on the appendices”. In exchange for scaling back its nuclear programme, Iran is seeking a lifting of painful sanctions.

Russia’s top negotiator Sergei Ryabkov Thursday voiced cautious optimism, saying a complex text and annexes were “91 per cent” finished.

“I can’t predict how many hours it will take to resolve this situation. But all parties are of the opinion that this matter will be resolved in the coming days,” Ryabkov, deputy foreign minister, told Russian news agency TASS.

It will be up to the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to verify Iran is sticking to its side of the bargain through enhanced inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Published in Dawn July 4th, 2015

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