Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US secretary of state John Kerry will confer ahead of negotiations in Geneva with six world powers on settling Tehran

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Iran and the US will explore ways to give impetus to nuclear talks when their chief diplomats meet in Geneva on Wednesday, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Sunday.

Zarif and US secretary of state John Kerry will confer ahead of a fresh round of negotiations between Iran and six world powers on settling their 12-year standoff over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Lower-level negotiators on both sides will meet at the same venue on Thursday to iron out technical details ahead of negotiations on 18 January between Iran and the “P5+1” powers – the US, France, Germany, Russia, China and Britain.

Speaking at a Tehran news conference, Zarif said the purpose of the talks with Kerry “is to see if we can speed up and push the negotiations forward”.

“We will see how useful it will turn out. We are constantly gauging the benefits,” he told reporters, referring to recent dialogue with the US after decades of hostility dating back to Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

Zarif said Iran-US talks “will remain confined to the margins of the nuclear negotiations”.

“Talks with the US take on a peculiar hue because we don’t have diplomatic relations. With the others in P5+1, things follow their routine course.”

Under an interim deal reached by the six powers and Iran in 2013, Tehran halted higher-level uranium enrichment in exchange for a limited easing of the financial and trade sanctions which have damaged its economy, including access to some frozen oil revenues abroad.