France: 'no progress' in Iran nuclear talks

Talks at the UN over Iran's nuclear program continue Friday, with France's top diplomat saying "no progress" has been made. Diplomats are hustling for pledges from Iran to cutback activity at its nuclear plants.
Schwerwasserreaktor Arak

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Friday that high-level talks with Iran ongoing at the UN have failed to yield progress on curbing Tehran's nuclear program.

"At this time, as I speak, there is no significant progress," Fabius told journalists on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Negotiators from Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany opened a fresh round of talks last Friday - two months before current sanctions against Iran over its nuclear ambitions expire.

"The goal of an agreement is to ensure that Iran under no circumstances will acquire a nuclear weapon," Fabius went on. "We must talk about the Arak reactor, the centrifuges…If Iran renounces plans to develop a nuclear weapon, there is no need to have an incommensurable number of centrifuges," France's top diplomat said.

The delegates are looking for pledges from Tehran to cutback activity at its nuclear plants by November 24. With no apparent progress achieved in the six-party talks, US Secretary of State John Kerry met late Thursday with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. According to a US State Department official, the three-way talks "took stock" of the progress made in the past week; no other details were released.

'Never been so close'

On Thursday, meanwhile, Germany's top diplomat said the New York talks had made progress.

"We have never been so close to a deal as now," Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters after personal talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the General Assembly meeting.

Steinmeier acknowledged that there were still "hurdles to get over." But, he stressed that there was no time to lose when it came to resolving the dispute.

"Now is the time to end this conflict," he said. "I hope that Iran…in view of the situation in the world and the situation in the Middle East, knows and senses that a collapse of the talks now is not permissible."

Iran 'indispensable'

At UN Security Council talks last week, Steinmeier spoke openly about Iran potentially playing a role in resolving the ongoing crisis surrounding the self-proclaimed "Islamic State," a militant Islamist group that has seized territory throughout Syria and northern Iraq.

Steinmeier said Tehran could be " indispensable" diplomatically, stressing that the "problems" caused by Iran's nuclear ambitions shouldn't block the West from including it in efforts to bring an end to the onslaught by IS.

glb/kms (Reuters, AFP, AP)