At the end of today's talks in Geneva, Switzerland, Iran and the six powers have agreed for talks to continue until the end of October.

After a lull of more than a year, Iran and the so-called P5+1 group consisting of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - Russia, China, USA, France and the UK- and Germany met in Geneva to resolve their differences today.

While the talks were formally intended to last just a day, and despite UK's efforts to undermine the success of the talks by attempting to remove Iran's package of proposal from the agenda, there was evidently enough substance in the discussions that the participants decided to meet throughout October to explore them.

In the run-up to the talks and throughout the day, Iran had made it clear that its rights to peaceful nuclear technology were not subject to negotiation and that the talks to focus on its package of proposal that was submitted to the P5+1 countries on September 9. Iran also insisted on the necessity for a global nuclear disarmament.

Iran's packaged defined a framework for discussions about a number of issues, including global economy, security concerns and nuclear disarmament.

As details of the talks began to emerge, a number of Western sources have reported that, in a rare development, senior Iranian and US officials met in bilateral talks on the sidelines of the Geneva summit throughout the day.

“On the margins of the meeting, Undersecretary (William) Burns, who is heading our delegation, met with his Iranian counterpart,” US State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood told reporters, according to the Associated Press.

The same report quoted two unnamed Western diplomats as saying that Burns and Iran's chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili, “discussed issues during the lunch break” after the first round of the talks in the morning.

ZAP/MB