Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, is due to meet his US counterpart, John Kerry, on Thursday as international negotiations over the Iranian nuclear programme resume for the first time since Iran’s presidential elections.
Zarif will meet the US secretary of state and the foreign ministers of five other world powers in what will be the highest-level direct US-Iranian talks since the Iranian revolution of 1979. It was announced by Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, after her own first meeting with Zarif on the eve of the UN general assembly in New York.
“What I saw today is energy and determination to move forward on our talks and many things flow from that,” said Ashton, who acts as a convenor for the six-nation group that leads nuclear negotiations with Iran. She also said diplomats and experts from the negotiating group would meet then with an Iranian team next month in Geneva to talk about the details of a possible nuclear compromise.
