Iran rejects report on draft nuclear deal with US

A senior Iranian negotiator has dismissed as “imaginations” a media report about a draft nuclear deal agreed between Tehran and Washington which restricts the number of Iran’s active centrifuges to 6,000.

“The numbers and figures mentioned here and there are just imaginations,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Abbas Araqchi told Press TV reporter in the Swiss city of Lausanne on Thursday, adding that “no draft exists, we haven’t started drafting yet.”

Earlier in the day, the Associated Press (AP) released a report about a draft deal currently being negotiated between Iran and the US under which Tehran has agreed to reduce the number of its uranium enrichment centrifuges by 40 percent in return for the immediate removal of Washington’s anti-Tehran sanctions.

The Iranian diplomat also stressed that the two sides are trying to bridge differences on important issues regarding Tehran’s nuclear program, but “haven’t concluded on anything yet.”

“We have not come to any concrete agreement yet on any issue,” Araqchi stated.

Washington’s reaction

US Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken also dismissed AP’s report as “erroneous.”

“The fundamental framework issues are still under comprehensive discussion. There is no draft document being circulated,” he said, adding, “My understanding is that there is no draft, that report is erroneous.”

Fifth day of talks in Lausanne

The report came on the fifth day of Iran-US nuclear negotiations in the Swiss city of Lausanne. The talks on Thursday were led by Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Following his talks with Kerry, the Iranian foreign minister said the negotiations over Tehran's nuclear energy program have reached an extremely complicated point.

He also told Press TV that the Iranian delegation will stay in Lausanne as long as it is necessary.

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi, Zarif’s deputies, Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takht-e Ravanchi, special assistant to Iran's president, Hossein Fereidoun, US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and Schmid were also present during the fifth day of the negotiations.

Salehi and Moniz had held one-on-one talks earlier in the morning.

The latest round of negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program kicked off in the Swiss city on Sunday with Salehi and Moniz holding high-level technical talks. Experts from Iran and the US as well as the AEOI spokesman, Behrouz Kamalvandi, also participated in the meeting.

The talks between the US and Iran are part of broader negotiations between Tehran and the P5+1 group of countries, namely Russia, China, the US, the UK, France and Germany, to reach a comprehensive agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program as a deadline slated for July 1 draws closer.

The two sides have already missed two self-imposed deadlines for inking a final agreement since they signed an interim accord in the Swiss city of Geneva in November 2013.

FNR/MKA/SS

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