Iran says U.S. and allies lack ‘political will’ for final nuke deal

Iran says U.S. and allies lack ‘political will’ for final nuke deal

In a sign that a nuclear deal may be further off than the Obama administration is willing to admit, Iranian negotiators said Wednesday that they are holding out for a complete end to sanctions and accused the U.S. and its allies of lacking the “political will” to go along.

With the talks in Lausanne, Switzerland already blowing through the Tuesday deadline for an accord, comments in the Iranian press suggest top officials in Tehran are already trying to frame a breakdown as the fault of the Obama administration and the West.

Seyed Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s deputy lead negotiator in the talks that carried on Wednesday after blowing past a self-imposed deadline for a deal on Tuesday night, said Tehran’s demand for the removal economic sanctions as well as the U.S.-backed embargo on Iranian crude oil is unwavering.

“We insist that all the economic, financial and crude sanctions be canceled in the first step of the agreement and a specific framework be drawn for (the removal of) those embargoes that are related to other sectors,” Mr. Araqchi, also a deputy foreign minister, told Iran’s state-run TV Channel One, according to the semi-official FARS news service in Tehran.

With latest round of talks seeming poised to enter an eighth exhaustive day in Lausanne, Switzerland, Mr. Araqchi said that “progress has been made with regard to the removal of the sanctions, but it is not complete yet.”

At the same time, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif asserted that Western parties in the talks, including the U.S., Germany, Britain and France, are to blame for the failure to reach a final deal. “Progress in talks depends on political will,” Mr. Zarif told reporters in Lausanne on Wednesday, according to FARS. “The opposite party’s political will has always been in trouble.”

via NorthEast Calling http://ift.tt/19L5OGf