Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 11
By Umid Niayesh, Saeed Isayev - Trend:
Iran held general talks with P5+1 group, only on general issues regarding the nuclear program, leaving the details for the expert-level talks, Iranian Deputy FM for European and American affairs, Majid Takht Ravanchi said, Mehr news agency reported on Jan. 11.
"Iran sees the nuclear issue as a legal and political issue. We've discussed both of these aspects with P5+1," the official said. "To save time, we discussed only general issues. If we wanted to resolve all the problems, we would've talked for hours and days."
Ravanchi noted that during the talks, both sides skipped the time-consuming topics, and focused only on the main issue of the nuclear program.
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 researches instead.
Iran and the P5+1 reached a nuclear agreement on Nov. 24. Iran has agreed to curb some of its nuclear activities for six months in return for sanctions relief.
Speaking about the White House-released fact sheet on the nuclear deal between Iran and P5+1, and that the U.S. statements claim the deal doesn't include Iran's right to enrich uranium, Ravanchi said those statements were for domestic use, to satisfy the critics.
"The details of the deal have already been discussed, without being written in the Plan of Action," he said.
"There was a verbal understanding about the certain things, such as transferring $400 million of restricted Iranian funds directly to internationally recognized educational institutions, to defray the tuition costs of Iranian students," he explained.
The deputy FM said that if there was no verbal agreement on details, the expert-level talks would've not been held, and no success would've been achieved in a short period of time.
Ravanchi also said that after the outcome of the expert-level negotiations, the details will be made public.
"Geneva deal is not an agreement with any legal obligations," he said. "It's a voluntary memorandum of understanding, not a legal document."
Ravanchi said that if the nuclear deal is completely implemented, then only the sanctions that were imposed on Iran due to its nuclear program and those of the UN Security Council, will be lifted.