Iran nuclear talks: Fresh hopes as John Kerry joins foreign ministers in Geneva

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John Kerry, the US Secretary of State has arrived in Geneva to begin key talks with foreign ministers in a bid to curb the Iranian nuclear programme by offering limited sanctions relief.

The Geneva talks follow a meeting earlier this month with foreign ministers, but failed to produce an agreement over Tehran's uranium enrichment.

Iran claims it has a right to produce nuclear fuel through uranium enrichment and denies seeking nuclear weapons.

However, Washington and its allies point to Tehran's earlier efforts to hide enrichment and allege it worked on developing such weapons.

Talks had been scheduled to finish on Friday but were extended in the hope of reaching a last minute deal, after diplomats indicated talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif and European Union diplomat Catherine Ashton had made progress.

Mr Kerry joined other foreign ministers who arrived today from Russia, Britain, France, China and Germany.

Germany's Guido Westerwelle spoke of ''a realistic chance, but there is still a lot of work to do". Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the RIA-Novosti news agency that negotiations were very close to a breakthrough but said: ''Unfortunately I cannot say that there is assurance of achieving this breakthrough.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters he wanted “a deal — but a solid deal — and I am here to work toward that end.” France has maintained a more hard line stance on Iran than other Western powers.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said remaining gaps in talks between Iran and six powers on Tehran's nuclear programme were narrow but important.

“They remain very difficult negotiations ... We are not here because things are necessarily finished,” he said. “There are narrow gaps but they are important gaps.”

Mr Hague said a "huge amount of progress" had been made in recent weeks but some "difficult areas" remained from talks in Geneva two weeks ago.

He added: "There is a huge amount of agreement and it remains the case that a huge amount of progress has been made in recent weeks. The state of this negotiation is entirely different from a few months ago."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-nuclear-talks-fresh-hopes-as-john-kerry-joins-foreign-ministers-in-geneva-8959158.html