Reuters, Vienna :France’s foreign minister appeared to put pressure on the United States and Iran on Saturday to speed up nuclear talks, saying all issues were now on the table and that the time had come to make a decision.Western and Iranian diplomats close to the talks said they expected to work well into the night in hopes of a breakthrough, perhaps as early as today, on a deal to bring sanctions relief for Tehran in exchange for curbs on its atomic programme.Iran and the six powers involved in the talks – Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States – have given themselves until on Monday to reach a deal, their third extension in two weeks, as the Iranian delegation accused the West of throwing up new stumbling blocks to an accord.”Now that everything is on the table, the moment has come to decide,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement sent to Reuters after speaking to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.Among the biggest sticking points this week has been Iran’s insistence that a United Nations Security Council arms embargo and ban on its ballistic missile programme dating from 2006 be lifted immediately if an agreement is reached.Russia, which sells weapons to Iran, has publicly supported Tehran on the issue.However, a senior Western diplomat said earlier in the week the six powers remained united, despite Moscow’s and Beijing’s well-known dislike of the embargos.Western powers have long suspected Iran of aiming to build nuclear bombs and using its civilian atomic energy programme to cloak its intention – an accusation Iran strongly denies.Other problematic issues in the talks are access for inspectors to military sites in Iran, answers from Tehran over past activity and the overall speed of sanctions relief.”Still have difficult issues to resolve,” Kerry tweeted on Saturday after meeting Zarif.The two men have met nearly every day since Kerry arrived in Vienna more than two weeks ago for what was intended to be the final phase in a negotiation process lasting more than year and a half aimed at securing a long-term deal with Iran.An agreement would be the biggest step towards rapprochement between Iran and the West since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, although both sides are likely to remain wary of each other even if a deal is concluded.In separate comments, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani suggested the talks could go either way while Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said Tehran would continue its fight against “global arrogance” – referring to the United States.According to his website, Khamenei was asked by a student what would happen to the “fight against global arrogance” after the completion of the nuclear talks and the supreme leader replied that fight must go on.
