TALKs in Lausanne between Iran and six world powers on a ground-breaking deal to constrain its nuclear programme, in return for the staged lifting of sanctions, ran straight through their March 31st deadline; the negotiators decided in the wee hours of April 1st to give themselves another day to haggle. The cause of the over-run was tension between the fuzzy declaration of principles that the Iranians would prefer and the detailed framework agreement that the Americans need to persuade a sceptical Congress to postpone a vote on new sanctions when it returns on April 14th.
The Americans want precise numbers on how many uranium enrichment centrifuges Iran can spin, how much uranium it can hold and how much plutonium can come out of a reactor at Arak. The Iranians want to avoid specifics on nuclear limits at this stage, while securing firm commitments on the lifting of sanctions, particularly those imposed by the UN. On sanctions, the West wants automatic “snap-back” if any serious violation by Iran is detected, which the Iranians reject.
All this makes it unlikely that whatever comes of...
From The Economist: Middle East and Africa
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