[David Cameron and Hassan Rouhani
agree this week’s Lausanne talks offer ‘historic opportunity’ to end
long-running standoff]
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David
Cameron and Iranian president Hassan Rouhani meet at the UN in
September 2014.
The pair held their first phone conversation on Thursday.
Photograph:
Timothy A Clary / Pool/EPA
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David Cameron and the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, have
agreed that international negotiators in Switzerland have a “historic
opportunity” in the next few days to put together a framework deal to resolve a
long-running and dangerous standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme.
Cameron and Rouhani met at the UN last September, but this was
their first significant conversation since then and their first phone call.
Downing Street said it was made on the initiative of the Iranian president and
lasted half an hour early on Thursday afternoon.
“It was a substantive discussion and was pretty cordial,” a
Downing Street spokeswoman said. It dwelt mostly on the multilateral nuclear
talks under way in Lausanne in the runup to an end-of-March deadline for
producing a framework understanding on what a final deal would look like.
Diplomats would then have until the end of June to complete the fine print on
the agreement.
The prime minister urged Rouhani “to seize the opportunity
offered by the talks and not underestimate the concerns of the international
community” in ensuring Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful, the
spokeswoman said.
The conversation also covered the turmoil in Yemen and the
bilateral relationship between the UK and Iran. Cameron insisted he
remained keen to reopen an embassy in Tehran, but several outstanding technical
issues had to be resolved first.
According to a version of the
conversation on the state-run Iranian news agency IRNA, Rouhani
urged all states at the talks to “take the unique chance of striking a deal”
and “not let the chance slip away easily”. IRNA said the Iranian president had
“highlighted the constructive role of the UK at the present juncture in
carrying on with talks on equal basis”.
Rouhani also held phone conversations on Thursday with the
leaders of France, Russia and China as the talks resumed in Lausanne after a
five-day pause, under the leadership of the US secretary of state, John Kerry,
and the Iranian foreign minister, Muhammad Javad Zarif.
The White House confirmed it had received a letter from Rouhani.
The Iranian president tweeted that he had also sent letters to the leaders of
the other states represented at the talks – the UK, France, Germany, Russia and
China – though it was unclear what the letters said.
“These are tough negotiations involving complex technical
judgments and difficult political choices. We have made substantial progress in
a number of areas but there are still important issues where no agreement has
so far been possible,” a senior British diplomat said.
“Our task for the next few days is to see whether we can bridge
the gaps and arrive at a political framework which could then be turned into an
agreement, and that will be a process that could quite a long time because of
the complexity of the subject matter.”
If diplomats get close to a deal, the foreign ministers from all
the negotiating nations are due to fly out to join Kerry and Zarif in Lausanne,
possibly this weekend.
Among the outstanding issues are the timing of the lifting of
sanctions on Iran, the country’s right to carry out research and development on
centrifuge technology for uranium enrichment, and the future use of an underground
enrichment plant at Fordow.
The Associated Press
reported on Thursday that a compromise was being considered
concerning Fordow, which western powers insist cannot be used for uranium
enrichment on any scale, in the face of Iranian objections. In the compromise
described by AP Iran would be allowed to spin a few hundred centrifuges in
Fordow, not to refine uranium but other elements, such as zinc, xenon or
germanium, for medical and scientific purposes.
Even if there is agreement on the substance of the negotiations,
there is lingering discord over how the agreement should be presented. The
Iranians and Europeans would like it to disclose as little as possible in
public, while Kerry – who has to present the results of the talks to Congress
next week – wants a list of specific agreed issues to be made public.
“We
will need to communicate as many specifics as possible to the public in some
form or fashion. What that will look like we truly just do not know at this
point yet,” said a senior US State Department official. “Obviously, we’ll be
communicating that to Congress as well. But I think what folks are focused on
right now is the substance of what we are trying to work towards in a political
framework, and as we get closer here, I think conversations about the form for
some sort of public announcement will be a part of the discussion, but we truly
do not know at this point.”
