Iran has a "last chance" to negotiate in earnest to save the Iran nuclear deal, British foreign minister Liz Truss warned on Sunday (December 12th) after a G7 meeting which also warned the Russia against an invasion of Ukraine.
"This is the last chance for Iran to come to the negotiating table with a serious solution to this problem," said the minister, whose country currently chairs the group of great powers.
She urged Iran to come "with a serious proposal".
"It is vital that he does so" because "we will not let Iran acquire nuclear weapons", hammered Liz Truss at a press conference in Liverpool, in the north of England.
Indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States, notably through the Europeans, resumed at the end of November in Vienna to try to resuscitate the 2015 agreement supposed to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring the atomic bomb.
The Americans withdrew from this text in 2018, under the presidency of Donald Trump who restored its sanctions against Tehran, which in response gradually freed itself from restrictions on its nuclear program.
"Massive consequences" if Moscow attacks Kiev
The current President of the United States, Joe Biden, has said he is ready to return to the agreement if Iran also returns to its commitments, but the negotiations which began in April and have just resumed after five months of stop seem deadlocked.
The West accused the Iranians of backtracking from the spring.
American diplomacy openly suspects the enemy country of wanting to gain time at the same time to develop its nuclear program which brings it closer and closer to the bomb.
Washington has warned in recent days that it will not let Tehran adopt this attitude for long, and confirmed that a still unclear plan B was in preparation.
But this is the first time that a member country of the agreement has said that these are the last-ditch negotiations.
According to Liz Truss, this G7 of Foreign Ministers has also displayed a united front against Moscow, which the West has accused for a few weeks of preparing for a possible invasion of Ukraine, despite the denials of the Kremlin.
The Liverpool meeting showed, according to the British minister, that the G7 countries "are very clear" on the fact "that there would be massive consequences for Russia in the event of an incursion into Ukraine".
In a joint declaration, the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States as well as the High Representative of the European Union call for Russia to "de-escalate" and "search for diplomatic solutions".
"We are united in our condemnation of the strengthening of the military presence and of Russia's aggressive discourse against Ukraine," they write, reaffirming their "unwavering support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine ".
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The threat of unprecedented sanctions has been formulated in recent days by Washington, and in particular by President Joe Biden, who has met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Poutin.
An American official present in Liverpool assured Saturday that it was still possible to resolve "through diplomacy" this new Ukrainian crisis.
For this, the US government has announced that it is sending its Deputy Secretary of State for Europe, Karen Donfried, to Ukraine and Russia from Monday to Wednesday, in search of "diplomatic progress to end the conflict in the Donbass. ", in eastern Ukraine," by implementing the Minsk agreements ".
These agreements reached in 2015 to end the war that broke out a year earlier in this Ukrainian region between the forces of Kiev and pro-Russian separatists were never really respected.
If Russia "decides not to take this" diplomatic route, "there will be massive consequences and a significant price to pay, and the G7 is absolutely united on this," the American official had already warned.
"Not only the countries that were in the room but an even greater number of democratic states would join us in making Russia pay the price", she added.
Pope Francis said on Sunday to pray for "dear Ukraine", hoping "that the tensions will henceforth be resolved by serious international dialogue and not by arms".
With AFP
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