Reuters, Vienna :
World powers and Iran began the second day of talks in Vienna on Tehran’s contested nuclear programme on Wednesday, with Western and Iranian diplomats saying the Ukraine crisis has not complicated their efforts so far.
The meeting is the second in a series that Western governments – the United States, France, Britain and Germany – as well as China and Russia hope will culminate in a broad settlement of the decade-old dispute that threatens to draw the Middle East into a new war.
The talks are seeped in mutual mistrust and years of adversity, and tensions between Moscow and Western capitals over Crimea could further strain diplomacy, because Russia has in the past differed with the West in their approaches towards Tehran.
Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi said that the crisis in Ukraine – the worst confrontation between the West and the East since the Cold War – had so far had “no impact” on talks with the six nations.
“We also prefer the (powers) to have a unified approach for the sake of negotiations,” he told reporters late on Tuesday, noting that the first day of talks was “positive and very good”.
