NEGOTIATIONS over Iran’s nuclear programme resumed yesterday, hours after diplomats abandoned a March 31 deadline.

And as three of the six foreign ministers involved left the talks, prospects for agreement remained uncertain.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that if both sides made progress on the text of a joint statement, it could be issued by the end of the day. But he suggested the statement would contain nothing specific.

A senior Western official quickly retorted that nothing had been decided and that Iran’s negotiating partners would not accept a document that contained no detail.

Mr Araghchi named differences on sanctions relief as one dispute, along with arguments over research and development.

The exchanges reflected significant gaps between the sides and came shortly after the end of the first post-deadline meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry, his British and German counterparts and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif in the Swiss town of Lausanne.

Eager to avoid a collapse in the discussions, the US claimed that enough progress had been made to warrant an extension of the talks.

The foreign ministers of China, France and Russia all departed Lausanne overnight, although the significance of their absence was not clear.

After the talks last broke early yesterday, Mr Zarif said solutions to many of the problems had been found and that documents attesting to that would soon be drafted.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued his prophesies of doom from the sidelines, proclaiming that the world must insist on a “better deal.”

It was not clear, however, if the Israeli Prime Minister had any more idea what any agreement might contain than any other observer Mr Netanyahu claimed that world powers were looking to ease sanctions on Iran while, he alleged, it continued to “wreak havoc in the Middle East and threaten Israel with annihilation.”

Iran views Israel’s destruction as non-negotiable, he said, “but evidently giving Iran’s murderous regime a clear path to the bomb is negotiable.”
“This is unconscionable,” he fumed.