Kerry says pact on Iran still iffy

Nuclear-talks deadline approaches

Secretary of State John Kerry tries to adjust the lectern Sunday as he delivers a statement on the Iran talks in Vienna. Speaking on the ninth day of this round of nuclear talks, Kerry said disagreements remain on several significant issues.
Secretary of State John Kerry tries to adjust the lectern Sunday as he delivers a statement on the Iran talks in Vienna. Speaking on the ninth day of this round of nuclear talks, Kerry said disagreements remain on several significant issues.

VIENNA -- On the ninth day of nuclear negotiations, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday said the diplomatic efforts "could go either way," cutting off all potential pathways for an Iranian atomic bomb or ending without an agreement that American officials have sometimes described as the only alternative to war.

The European Union's top foreign policy official, Federica Mogherini, said agreement was "very close." But Kerry said there was still a ways to go.

"We are not yet where we need to be on several of the most critical issues," Kerry said outside the 19th-century Viennese palace that has hosted the negotiations.

World powers and Iran are hoping to clinch a deal by Tuesday, setting a decade of restrictions on Iran's nuclear program and granting Iran relief from international sanctions. Kerry met for 3½ hours Sunday with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, as top diplomats from the five other negotiating countries planned to return to Austria's capital later in the evening.

"It is now time to see whether or not we are able to close an agreement," Kerry said.

While "genuine progress" had been made and the sides "have never been closer, at this point, this negotiation could go either way. If the hard choices get made in the next couple of days, and made quickly, we could get an agreement this week," Kerry said. "But if they are not made, we will not."

The talks had appeared to be moving forward. On Saturday, diplomats reported tentative agreement on the speed and scope of sanctions relief for Iran in the accord, even as issues such as inspection guidelines and limits on Iran's nuclear research and development remained contentious.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke of "sharper" deal contours.

"But that shouldn't deceive us," he said. "There's still a possibility that there will be a lack of courage and readiness in crucial points to build the bridges that we need to find to each other."

Mogherini, formally the convener of the talks between Iran and six world powers, said that as of today, foreign ministers and other top diplomats "are here to check and assess if the deal can be closed."

None of the sides have formulated a "Plan B" should the talks collapse, she said.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the key remaining question is whether "the Iranians will accept to make clear commitments on what has not yet been clarified."

Tuesday's deadline is the latest that has been set for a comprehensive pact that would replace the interim deal that world powers and Iran reached in November 2013. That package was extended three times, most recently on Tuesday.

Kerry appeared to be partly addressing critics of the diplomacy in the United States who've argued that President Barack Obama's administration has been too conciliatory over the course of the negotiations.

Obama and U.S. officials say that is untrue. But they've also defended their willingness to allow the Iranians to maintain significant nuclear infrastructure on the argument that a diplomatic agreement is preferable to military conflict.

Another extension "is not a desired alternative for any of the parties," said Zarif's deputy, Abbas Araghchi.

Araghchi said Saturday that an 80-page draft agreement with five annexes is in circulation, and foreign ministers now have to make the final decisions on issues of timing and reciprocity. He said any deal struck in Vienna won't be final until it's passed through U.S. and Iranian legislatures.

Speaking at the same time as Sunday news shows aired in the U.S., Kerry said that "if we don't have a deal, if there's absolute intransigence with the things that are important, President Obama has always said we would walk away."

"It's not what anybody wants. We want to get an agreement," he said. "What I have said from the moment I became involved in this: We want a good agreement, only a good agreement, and we are not going to shave anywhere at the margins in order just to get an agreement. This is something that the world will analyze, experts everywhere will look at. There are plenty of people in the nonproliferation community, nuclear experts who will look at this, and none of us are going to be content to do something that can't pass scrutiny."

This is the 20th round of high-level talks since a groundbreaking phone conversation between Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani almost two years ago. After Kerry negotiated for eight straight days at the previous round in Lausanne, Switzerland, diplomatic historians called it the longest continuous senior-level meeting since the 1978 Camp David accords that led to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

While talks continued in Vienna, Iranian media reported that the United Nations nuclear agency sent its deputy director-general to Tehran on Sunday night.

Much of the past week has involved discussions with International Atomic Energy Agency Director-general Yukiya Amano. While the agency isn't formally a party to the negotiations, it will play a key role in implementing a final accord.

Amano said Saturday that his agency, now in the 12th year of an investigation into possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear past, can provide its assessment by December. Resolving issues of past concern is a key demand Iran must meet to win sanctions relief.

Advice: Don't rush

In the U.S., Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of a committee that will be pivotal in deciding an agreement's fate in Congress, said American negotiators shouldn't rush to finish a nuclear deal with Iran simply to meet a deadline that would allow a shorter congressional review period.

Corker, a Tennessee Republican who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the talks have been "going on a negative trend for some time."

Appearing on CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday, Corker said he had spoken to Kerry on Saturday and voiced his concerns about rushing too quickly toward a settlement.

"Well, obviously they're very anxious," he said of Obama administration officials. "I mean, I think they look at this as a legacy issue.

"I've had several conversations with him [Kerry] in meetings to say, 'Look, you create just as much as a legacy walking away from a bad deal as you do headlong rushing into breaking into a bad deal," Corker said.

If Obama sends an Iran deal to Congress by Thursday, lawmakers will have 30 days to review it, hold hearings and potentially vote to block it. If there's no agreement sent to Congress by Thursday, the review period gets extended to 60 days, a period that would include Congress' typical August recess.

Blocking a deal would require a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress, because Obama would be expected to veto any attempt to stop a deal his administration believes will cut off Iran's path to a nuclear weapon.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., criticized what he called the "smug, condescending tone" of Iran's Zarif. "They think they're negotiating from a position of strength," Cotton said on ABC's This Week on Sunday.

Cotton, a longtime critic of the U.S. approach to Iran, said the U.S. has already made too many concessions, including letting Iran keep its ballistic missile program and uranium, and agreeing to a deal while three Americans are held in Iranian prisons under charges the U.S. says are unjustified.

Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the best outcome for the U.S. would be an agreement that ensures full inspections, and that inspectors will need to know what Iran has done in the past.

"The best option is a strong agreement," Cardin, D-Md., said on This Week. "The Congress will do an independent oversight."

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a staunch critic of the deal emerging in Vienna, called the reports of progress in talks a "breakdown" and not a breakthrough. He said that each day that passes brings greater Western concessions toward Iran.

Israel has been a vocal opponent of loosening sanctions in return for curbs on Iran's nuclear program, saying this would lead to a bomb and aid the Islamic Republic in expanding its network of global terrorism.

Netanyahu assailed a preliminary deal reached earlier this year. He said the looming accord is even worse than the one that previously allowed North Korea to go nuclear.

Information for this article was contributed by Bradley Klapper, Matthew Lee, George Jahn and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Jonathan Tirone, Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Kambiz Foroohar, Henry Meyer, John Follain and Richard Rubin of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 07/06/2015

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