Discussions in Lausanne continue through the night with disagreement over Iran’s development of centrifuges and relief of UN sanctions causing impasse

Foreign ministers are due to reconvene in Lausanne on Thursday morning to consider fresh Iranian proposals aimed at bringing an end to the impasse that has mired negotiations over the the country’s nuclear programme.

No details were released about the proposals but an Iranian official had publicly hinted at new flexibility over one of the most intractable issues, the lifting of UN sanctions.

As the talks continued until dawn on Thursday, the US state department announced that the secretary of state, John Kerry, was postponing his departure and would remain until at least Thursday morning.

At about 6am local time, department spokeswoman Marie Harf tweeted that the talks had broken after an all-night session but would resume in a few hours.

According to the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Iranian delegation was asked to present any changes in its position formally at a meeting of foreign ministers and diplomats from a six-nation group involved in the negotiations.

“There will be new proposals tonight,” Steinmeier said late on Wednesday. “I can’t predict whether that will be sufficient to reach an agreement in the course of the night. Accuracy is more important than speed. I am of the opinion that a success is still possible.”

The talks are in their second day after a deadline for arriving at a framework agreement passed on Tuesday. Asked if he thought it possible the negotiations could collapse Steinmeier said: “Of course.”

The talks have been stuck over differences in demands on the amount of development work Iran would be permitted to carry out on new centrifuges, capable of enriching uranium much faster than the existing Iranian model.

A further obstacle has been a disagreement over how quickly UN sanctions should be lifted. While the Iranian delegation has so far insisted they are all cancelled at once, as soon as an agreement is signed, the country’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, suggested on Wednesday that Tehran might accept sanctions relief in stages.

“Sanctions have originated from various points and we are insisting that in the first step, all economic, banking and oil sanctions must be lifted and other sanctions that are related to other issues should also be determined in a timetable,” Araqchi said. “Unless we have a clear view of what will happen to those sanctions, we can’t go forward.”





Iran’s foreign minister, Mohamad Javad Zarif, rejected the suggestion that the onus was on his delegation to make concessions, suggesting that there were also divisions among the six nations he is negotiating with: the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China.

“We are facing six countries with different positions and interests among themselves and in regards to Iran,” Zarif said. “Coordination between these countries is very difficult but they should know that our people and their representatives in these talks will not accept pressure. There is an opportunity now for them to compensate for their behaviours towards Iranian people but it’s not clear if they will seize this opportunity.”

Among the disagreements in the six-nation group is the issue of “snap-backs”, mechanisms in which UN security council sanctions would be automatically re-imposed if Iran violated any agreement. Western nations want the mechanisms as an insurance against cheating, but Russia and China oppose them on the grounds they dilute the power of permanent members of the council. Steinmeier said Moscow and Beijing had been offered assurances their prerogatives would not be affected.

Laurent Fabius returned to the talks late on Wednesday night after a 24-hour trip back to France. The Thursday morning meeting will also be attended by Kerry, the UK foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, and Steinmeier. Their Russian and Chinese counterparts, Sergei Lavrov and Wang Yi, have left Lausanne and are not expected to return.



