Baku, Azerbaijan, March 12
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iranian deputy foreign minister and top nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi left Tehran for Moscow on March 12, ahead of the second round of nuclear talks with P5+1, Iran's IRNA news agency reported.
Araqchi is scheduled to meet with Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Rybakov.
Iranian deputy foreign minister also will pay a visit to China after Russia.
Russia and China are members of the P5+1 group (five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) which reached an interim nuclear deal with Iran in November 2013.
Under the agreement which took effect on Jan 20, the six major powers agreed to give Iran access to its $4.2 billion in revenues blocked overseas if the country fulfills the deal's terms which offer sanctions relief in exchange for steps on curbing the Iranian nuclear program.
The two sides held meetings in Vienna in February to work out a comprehensive deal.
Iran and P5+1 intend to continue their talks to reach a final agreement to fully resolve the decade-old dispute over the Islamic Republic's nuclear energy program.
The second round of nuclear talks is scheduled to start in Vienna on March 17 with a meeting between EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
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.