VIENNA, Feb 17, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - Iran has just days left to accept a deal
on its nuclear programme at talks in Vienna, France warned on Wednesday,
while Tehran's chief negotiator promised that an agreement was closer than
ever.

  "It is not a question of weeks, it is a question of days," French Foreign
Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told the Senate, adding that a major crisis would
be unleashed if there is no agreement.

  The Vienna talks, which involve Iran as well as Britain, China, France,
Germany and Russia directly, and the United States indirectly, resumed in
late November with the aim of restoring the 2015 deal. That accord had
offered Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear
programme, but the United States unilaterally withdrew in 2018 and reimposed
heavy economic sanctions, prompting Iran to begin rolling back on its
commitments.

  "We are closer than ever to an agreement," Iran's top negotiator Ali
Bagheri wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. "Our negotiating partners need to be
realistic, avoid intransigence and heed lessons of past 4yrs. Time for their
serious decisions."

  Earlier in the day, Tehran had called on the US Congress to say Washington
would commit if an agreement is reached in Vienna.

  "As a matter of principle, public opinion in Iran cannot accept as a
guarantee the words of a head of state, let alone the United States, due to
the withdrawal of Americans" in 2018, Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-
Abdollahian told the Financial Times in an interview published on his
ministry's website.

   He stressed that he had asked Iranian negotiators to propose to the
Western parties that "at least their parliaments or parliament speakers,
including the US Congress, can declare in the form of a political statement
their commitment to the agreement."

  - 'Within grasp' -

  In 2018, then-president Donald Trump reimposed sanctions against Iran,
battering the country's economy. In response, Tehran ramped up its nuclear
work, violating the terms of the 2015 deal, called the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA).

   Negotiations in Vienna are seeking to return Washington to the nuclear
deal, including through the lifting of sanctions on Iran, and to ensure
Tehran's full compliance with its commitments.

  "We need political decisions from the Iranians. They have a very clear
choice," France's Le Drian said.

  "Either they unleash a serious crisis in the next days... or they accept an
agreement that respects the interests of all the parties, especially those of
Iran," he said.

  He described a deal as being "within grasp" and noted there was now
agreement on an accord between the European powers as well as China, Russia
and the United States.

  But he said that time was running out because Iran was continuing to
intensify its nuclear activities.

  "The more this goes on, the more Iran is accelerating its nuclear
procedures," he said.