U.S., Iranian negotiators renew nuclear deal talks

GENEVA – Concerns over what ability to enrich uranium Iran would keep and whether it would maintain its controversial plutonium reactor at Arak remained points of disagreement Sunday as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, began another round of top-level talks.

Both issues are critical to limiting Iran’s capability for quick development of a nuclear weapon, and must be resolved if Iran and the world powers it’s negotiating with are to reach a long-term agreement on Iran’s nuclear program that would allow the lifting of economic sanctions.

U.S. and Iranian officials have been engaged in bilateral talks since Friday, and the European Union hosted a negotiating session Sunday after the Kerry-Zarif meeting.

The latest U.S.-Iran talks began as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned again that he believed an agreement would be dangerous. “I will go to the U.S. next week to explain to American Congress why this agreement is dangerous for Israel, the region and the entire world,” he said on Twitter.

Differences over Iran’s nuclear program have chilled relations between the Obama administration and Netanyahu. Those tensions will be on full display when Netanyahu appears before Congress March 3.

The talks that began Sunday have entered what Kerry described Saturday as a “very technical” stage, shown by the presence of U.S. Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz, a nuclear physicist whose government department oversees U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories.

“We are pushing to try to come to agreement on some very difficult issues,” Kerry said. “There are still significant gaps. There is still a distance to travel.”

Kerry said the Obama administration remains intent on having at least the outlines of a deal by the end of March, two months in advance of a June 30 deadline to complete an agreement that had been set by Iran and the negotiating parties, which include the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia and China – and Germany.

Kerry said failure to reach “a fundamental political outline and agreement” by March 31 “would be an indication that fundamental choices are not being made.”

“President Obama is fully prepared to stop these talks if he feels that they’re not being met with the kind of productive decision-making necessary to prove that a program is, in fact, peaceful,” Kerry said.