“We have a mutual disposition, with the Americans as well, to do everything possible in order to meet this deadline,” Lavrov said after a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Chinese capital, Beijing.
Lavrov said Iran and the P5+1 group are holding talks “to elaborate a system of guarantees of the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for a full gradual removal of sanctions against the country.”
Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - Russia, China, Britain, France and the US - plus Germany have been holding talks to work out a final deal aimed at ending the longstanding standoff over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program. The two sides have set November 24 as the deadline to reach the deal.
Iran and the six other countries are set to open a new round of nuclear talks in Oman on November 11.
Sources close to the Iranian negotiating team say the main stumbling block in the way of resolving the Western dispute over Iran’s nuclear energy program remains to be the removal of all the bans imposed on the country, and not the number of centrifuges or the level of uranium enrichment.
Tehran wants the sanctions entirely lifted while Washington, under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby, insists that at least the UN-imposed sanctions should remain in place.
