World powers will meet again in Geneva on October 15 and 16 for talks with Iran on its nuclear program after a ‘’positive meeting’’ Thursday in New York on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly, EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said.
She described the progress made during a meeting between Iran Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and Foreign Ministers of the five permanent Security Council members (US, Russia, China, UK, France) and Germany, known as the ‘P5+1’ forum, as "substantial."
The Foreign Ministers have asked Tehran to respond to their proposals before next month's discussions, the EU's Catherine Ashton, who is coordinating the meetings, told journalists.
She said the parties had agreed to "go forward with an ambitious timeframe."
Zarif said for his part: "We agreed to jump-start the process so that we could move forward with a view to agreeing first on the parameters of the end game ... and move toward finalizing it hopefully within a year's time." "I thought I was too ambitious, bordering on naiveté. But I saw that some of my colleagues were even more ambitious and wanted to do it faster."
Ashton also said the parties had agreed to "go forward with an ambitious timeframe."
The Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif said that the process would need to result in the “total lifting” of international sanctions on Iran.
However, US Secretary of State John Kerry told CBS that “The United States is not going to lift the sanctions until it is clear that a very verifiable, accountable, transparent process is in place.”
Kerry and the Iranian Minister shook hands and sat next to each other at the meeting. Kerry leaned over to Zarif as the meeting was ending and said: "Shall we talk for a few minutes." They then had an unexpected one-on-one meeting.
It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in six years.
Kerry said he was struck by the "very different tone" from Iran. But, like his European colleagues, he stressed that a single meeting was not enough to assuage international concerns that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program.
"Needless to say, one meeting and a change in tone, that was welcome, does not answer those questions," Kerry told reporters. "All of us were pleased that the Foreign Minister came today and that he did put some possibilities on the table."
He said they agree to continue the process and try to find concrete ways to answer the questions that people have about Iran's nuclear activities.
A senior U.S. official said that in the one-on-one meeting, aides from both sides chatted in a marked departure from past encounters, when the Iranians were tight-lipped. It was one of the signs of a new attitude, though what it means remains to be seen, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
The Americans asked Zarif to come back at the Geneva round or earlier with some more detailed proposals.