LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) – Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program picked up pace on Saturday with the foreign ministers of France and Germany joining U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in talks with Iran’s top diplomat ahead of a looming end-of-March deadline for a preliminary deal.
With just four days to go until that target, negotiators in the Swiss town of Lausanne settled in for another round of lengthy sessions that they hope will produce a two-to-three-page outline of an agreement that can then become the basis for a comprehensive deal to be reached by the end of June.
Beyond that document, key U.S. senators opposed to any deal as too lenient on Iran may be briefed in more detail by the Obama administration.
“We’re expecting an evening today,” Kerry told reporters when asked if he was expecting a good day at the start of his first meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Kerry was to meet later with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The foreign ministers of Russia, China and Britain also are expected in Lausanne over the weekend.