EU: No guarantee of success in negotiations with Iran

The nuclear negotiations between Tehran and the major powers in the P5+1, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, are “difficult” and there is “no guarantee of success” in reaching a final agreement, a senior EU official said on Sunday.

Speaking at a press conference during her first visit to Iran, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy for the European Union, Catherine Ashton, said that the interim agreement, signed in November 2013, is very important, but it doesn’t have the same importance of the final agreement, “which is currently the subject of the talks”.

In a joint press conference with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif, Ashton said: “We are going through difficult negotiations with challenges and no guarantee of success.

“It is very important that the Iranian people support the work of their Foreign Minister and his team and, with the international community’s support for my work, we have to outline the goal of reaching an agreement.”

Iran and the group of six states; the US, France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany, reached an interim agreement in November 2013 following which negotiations began to reach a final agreement in order to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis.

The West want to make sure Iran does not hide a military-related intention behind its nuclear programme, while Tehran denies that it seeks to make an atomic bomb.