Iran Nuclear Deal Commission Meets To Try To Save Accord

Vienna, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Feb, 2020 ) :The remaining parties to the faltering Iran nuclear deal will meet in Vienna on Wednesday in their first gathering after Britain, France and Germany launched a dispute process over Tehran's successive pullbacks.

The meeting comes as the parties try to find a way to save the landmark 2015 agreement, which has been crumbling since the US withdrew from it in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran.

The Europeans hope to persuade Tehran to come back into line with the deal curbing Iran's nuclear programme after Tehran made a series of steps away in protest at the US pull-out.

Wednesday's meeting at political directors' level, convening the commission set up by the deal, will be chaired by EU senior official Helga Schmid.

"This is a chance though not of 100 percent to stop escalation before it is too late," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying by the Russian Embassy in Vienna on Twitter.

In its last announcement in early January, Tehran said it would no longer observe limits on the number of centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

It was its fifth step away from the deal since US President Donald Trump's withdrawal and led to Germany, Britain and France triggering the dispute process on January 14.

The process spells out several steps, the last one of which is notifying the UN Security Council. UN sanctions would then automatically "snap back" after 30 days unless the Security Council voted to stop it.