Your trusted source

The talks on Iran’s nuclear program will go on until all the "brackets" in the first draft of a nuclear deal are removed, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister and chief negotiator Abbas Araqchi said, the Press TV channel reports, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

He made the remarks on the sidelines of the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in New York City.

"We already have a draft. Now we have to work on this draft for the second go, third go, and fourth go as long as necessary in order to remove the brackets one after another and come to a clean text," Araqchi noted, adding that it took time to remove the existing gaps in the first draft.

"Still, we [have] a long way to go. Still, the number of brackets are many," Press TV quotes him as saying.

According to the senior Iranian negotiator, Iran and the six world powers (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) will try to achieve progress during the talks in Austrian capital Vienna that begin on May 12.

Araqchi also noted that the two sides continue to work not only on the text itself but also on the annexes. "We will have some annexes, which clarify or specify the details of each and every measure that each side should take after the deal," he said.

He voiced satisfaction over the course of the talks, saying, "We are doing good progress. Steady but surely."