Iran and six world powers began their first talks at the UN in Geneva on a permanent nuclear agreement but deep differences remain about how much Tehran needs to scale back its atomic program in exchange for an end to economic sanctions.
The talks are formally led by Catherine Ashton, the EU's top foreign policy official, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany are also at the table.
The six powers seek an agreement that will leave Iran with little capacity to quickly ramp up its nuclear program into weapons-making mode with enriched uranium or plutonium, which can used for the fissile core of a missile.
For that, they say Iran needs to dismantle most of its 20,000 uranium enriching centrifuges, including some of those not yet working. They also demand that an Iranian reactor now being built be either scrapped or converted from a heavy-water setup to a light-water facility that makes less plutonium.
Ashton’s spokesperson Michael Mann warned of the "intensive and difficult work lying ahead of us."
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is the senior Iranian nuclear negotiator , said that that the removal of the country’s nuclear sites is not on the agenda of the talks, according to the Iranian Fars agency.
“Dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear sites is not on the agenda,” he said after the session of talks on Tuesday. “We emphasized that the yardstick for talks will be the joint plan of action and no issue outside the framework of this program can be on the agenda of the negotiations,” he said.