WASHINGTON: Nuclear talks with Iran would go beyond Tuesday’s formal deadline for a deal, a senior US official told reporters in Washington.

And Secretary of State John Kerry, who is leading the US team at the talks in Vienna, tweeted that he had “convened a working lunch with representatives from P5+1 countries”.

The countries trying to conclude a deal with Iran to prevent it from making nuclear weapons are five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France — and Germany.

Iranian foreign minister flies back to Tehran to meet top leaders

In Vienna, Iranian officials told reporters that their Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif was flying back to Tehran for consultations with the country’s top leaders.

The talks are believed to have stuck on a key point: how much access Iran will grant to nuclear monitors to convince the international community that it was not developing atomic weapons.

The two sides also had differences over the timing of sanctions relief.

They signed a framework agreement in April this year after which the United States and its European allies relaxed some of their sanctions on Iran. Other sanctions will be lifted once the deal is finalised.

Talks for the framework agreement had also continued beyond the official deadline and it seems that the talks for the final agreement were following the same pattern.

US officials, who spoke to journalists in Washington, however, insisted there would be no long-term extension. They said that Washington was not troubled by Mr Zarif’s return as it was always expected that ministers would consult their governments from Vienna as the talks progressed.

Mr Zarif told Secretary Kerry of his return to Tehran on Saturday, and he was expected to return on Monday, US officials said.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country has the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, warned on Sunday that P5+1 leaders were retreating from their own red lines in Iran nuclear talks.

“We are seeing a clear retreat from red lines that the world powers set recently and publicly,” Mr Netanyahu told his cabinet ministers in Jerusalem.

“There is no reason to rush to sign this bad agreement which is getting worse every day.”

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2015

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