Vienna/Washington, July 14
Iran and six world
powers on Tuesday thrashed out a historic agreement that curbs Tehran's
nuclear programme in exchange for lifting over a decade-long economic
sanctions.
The comprehensive agreement was clinched between Iran
and P5+1 - Britain, China, France, Russia and the US plus Germany --
after torturous talks in the Austrian capital.
Under the deal,
Iran would ship most of its nuclear stockpile to Russia, blocking the
technical path to a nuclear bomb, Xinhua qouted a source as saying.
The
deal would specify that the related UN resolutions on economic and
financial sanctions against Iran will be terminated all at once under a
UN resolution and in an agreed framework, Iranian media reported.
The
deal's text, which runs into around 100 pages, specifies key areas of
the Iranian nuclear issue, including nuclear technology cooperation,
capping its nuclear capacity and draft of UN Security Council
resolution.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the
development. "The deal is a bad mistake of historic proportions,"
Xinhua quoted him as saying.
"When you are willing to have an
agreement at any price, this is the result... In all fields, in which
they (P5+1) were supposed to prevent Iran from arming itself with
nuclear weapons, far-reaching concessions were made," Netanyahu said.
The deal is a high point of US President Barack Obama's foreign policy.
"Today,
after two years of negotiation, the US together with the international
community has achieved something that decades of animosity has not: a
comprehensive long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from
obtaining a nuclear weapon," Obama said from the White House.
"Every
pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off," CNN quoted Obama as saying. He
said the deal provides for extensive inspections. "This deal is not
built on trust. It is built on verification."
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif described the deal as "a historic moment".
But
he quickly added: "We are reaching an agreement that is not perfect for
anybody but it is what we could accomplish and it is an important
achievement for all of us."
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani confirmed the deal on Twitter, saying it "shows constructive engagement works".
After
Rouhani took office in 2013, Tehran and the six countries stepped up
the nuclear talks and signed a deal in Geneva in November 2013, under
which Tehran would suspend some disputed nuclear activities in exchange
for limited sanction relief from the West, buying time for diplomatic
efforts.
In the past 18 months, marathon negotiations between
Iran and P5+1 have resolved many tough issues which were once seen as
impossible.
Iran has said its nuclear programme was for peaceful purposes. The West feared it could be used to build an atomic bomb.
Yukiya
Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), explained that he had signed a roadmap with Iran to clarify past
and present outstanding issues.
"I have just signed the roadmap
between Iran and the IAEA for the clarification of past and present
outstanding issues regarding Iran's nuclear programme," he said.
Future access to Iran's Parchin military site, which was repeatedly sought, was part of a separate "arrangement", Amano added.
The
deal is meant to impose long-term, verifiable limits on nuclear
programmes that Tehran could modify to produce weapons. Iran, in return,
would get tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief.
