LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Iran's foreign minister sought Friday to dismiss concerns that his country's preoccupation with the crisis in Yemen could serve as a distraction at nuclear talks with six world powers, saying the negotiations remained focused on sealing a deal.
Yemen is "the hot issue of the day" and has come up at the talks but "it doesn't mean that we negotiated about it," Mohammad Javad Zarif said.
Saudi Arabia-led airstrikes on Shiite rebels in Yemen are further straining relations between the Sunni Persian Gulf kingdom and predominantly Shiite Iran. Zarif said they "have to stop and everybody has to encourage dialogue and national reconciliation."
Despite Iran's concerns over Yemen, however, "our negotiations are confined to the nuclear" issue, he said.
The negotiators are racing to meet an end-of-March deadline to reach an outline of an agreement that would grant Iran relief from international sanctions in exchange for curbing its nuclear program. The deadline for a final agreement is June 30.
Zarif spoke shortly after his first meeting of the day with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. The sides are hoping to narrow gaps in time to reach a preliminary deal by the end of the month. That would allow them to try and negotiate a comprehensive agreement by late June to put long-term curbs on Tehran's nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
Iran has been pushing for full sanctions relief as soon as a pact is sealed, but White House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama thought that would be "unwise."
"We need to see sustained long-range compliance with the agreement before we start having a conversation about removing things like the statutory sanctions that have been so critically important," said Earnest. "There is a way for us to do this in a phased fashion over the course of time."
Iranian officials have been upbeat recently about the chances of making enough progress by Tuesday, the month's end, to permit them to proceed into the summer. But Zarif was less bullish Friday, saying only that he hoped the sides would come to a common understanding by next week.
"The talks are very difficult and very complicated," he told Iranian TV.
In Washington, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the parties were "better than halfway" to a deal.
On some issues "we're close enough that we can be sure we will reach agreement on them," Hammond said. But on others, he added, "we are significantly apart, and it's going to require a significant move by the Iranians to reach our red line positions."
The Obama administration has made a nuclear accord a top foreign policy objective. Iran denies any interest in nuclear arms but has been drawn to the negotiating table in part by the promise of a lifting of sanctions.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani sent a letter to Obama and the leaders of the other countries at the talks -- Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. His office said Friday that the letter contained proposals on how to reach a deal, without elaborating. Rouhani also spoke to the leaders of Russia, France and Britain by phone.
Earnest confirmed that U.S officials received the letter meant for Obama, saying the president "is certainly aware of the contents," but Earnest would not disclose them.
The fate of a fortified underground bunker previously used for uranium enrichment appeared closer to resolution. Officials said the U.S. may allow Iran to run hundreds of centrifuges at the Fordo bunker in exchange for limits on centrifuge work and research and development at other sites.
The trade-off would allow Iran to run several hundred of the devices at the once-secret facility, although the Iranians would not be allowed to do work that could lead to an atomic bomb and the site would be subject to international inspections.
In return, Iran would be required to scale back the number of centrifuges it runs at its Natanz facility and accept other restrictions on nuclear-related work.
Instead of uranium, which can be enriched to be the fissile core of a nuclear weapon, any centrifuges permitted at Fordo would be fed elements used in medicine, industry or science, the officials said.
Even if re-purposed to enrich uranium, the number of centrifuges would not be enough to produce the amount needed to produce a weapon within a year. Washington and its negotiating partners demand that any deal must keep Iran at least a year away from producing an atomic weapon for the life of the agreement.
Information for this article was contributed by Bradley Klapper, Jim Kuhnhenn and Cara Anna of The Associated Press.
A Section on 03/28/2015