MADRID – German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Monday he was confident of reaching an agreement to save the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran “in the weeks to come”.
“We believe that (the talks) can achieve their goal,” he told reporters in Madrid after a gathering of the Stockholm Initiative, a group of 16 states working for nuclear disarmament.
“I think we will get there in the coming weeks,” Maas added of talks on Iran which resumed in April in Vienna.
The negotiations aim to salvage the agreement – known to diplomats as the JCPOA – between Iran and the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council plus Germany.
Under the Trump administration, the United States moved away from agreements aimed at preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
Following the Stockholm Initiative meeting in Madrid, member countries “renewed their appeal to all states possessing nuclear weapons…
Foreign ministers of Stockholm member states were meeting ahead of the next NPT review conference, which has been postponed to early next year due to the coronavirus pandemic, said Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya.
Members of the initiative include current co-chairs Germany, Spain and Sweden as well as Argentina, Canada, South Korea, Ethiopia, Finland, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan , Kazakhstan, Norway, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Switzerland.