Baku, Azerbaijan, June 5
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iran and the P5+1 group resumed technical nuclear talks in the Austrian capital city of Vienna for second day on June 5.
Experts from Iran and the P5+1 group held 4 hours of talks on technical issues on June 4, on the sidelines of the quarterly meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Board of Governors, Iran's Fars news agency reported on June 5.
Director General for political and international security affairs of Iran's Foreign Ministry, Hamid Baeidinejad leads the Iranian negotiating team in the ongoing talks while the P5+1 experts delegation is headed by Stephen Clement, an aide to EU foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton.
Tehran and the six world powers (five permanent members of the UN Security Council - plus Germany) have been discussing ways to iron out differences and start drafting a final deal on Tehran's disputed nuclear program.
Late in May the two sides held talks on the technical issues in Istanbul along with the meeting of Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif with his European counterpart Catherine Ashton.
In November 2013, Iran and the P5+1 signed an interim nuclear deal in Geneva that came into force on January 20.
The deal (the Joint Plan of Action) stipulates that over the course of six months, Iran and the six countries will draw up a comprehensive nuclear deal which will lead to a lifting of all the sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
The U.S. and its Western allies suspect Iran of developing a nuclear weapon - something that Iran denies. The Islamic Republic has on numerous occasions stated that it does not seek to develop nuclear weapons, using nuclear energy for medical research instead.