Iran nuclear talks likely to extend beyond midnight deadline

Nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers are likely to extend beyond a self-imposed deadline of midnight Tuesday, officials indicated with just hours to go until that target. Negotiators suggested that pushing discussions into Wednesday may be enough to yield a face-saving framework agreement.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said enough progress had been made to warrant an extension, although there still were "several difficult issues" to bridge. Secretary of State John Kerry, who had planned to leave the talks on Tuesday, will remain until Wednesday, she added.

Diplomats said China's foreign minister left the talks to return to Beijing and would be represented by his deputy. U.S. officials said they were prepared to continue to negotiate into Wednesday if it could lead to a framework accord.

An Iranian negotiator, meanwhile, said his team could stay "as long as necessary" to clear the remaining hurdles.

In Washington, White House press secretary Josh Earnest suggested that talks meant to produce an outline that would allow the sides to continue negotiations until the June 30 final deadline had not bridged all gaps. But he said that the sides were working to produce a text with little in the way of specifics, accompanied by documents outlining areas where further talks were needed.

For nearly a week, the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany (the P5+1) have been trying to break an impasse in the talks, which are aimed at preventing Iran from gaining the capacity to develop a nuclear weapon in exchange for easing international sanctions that are crippling its economy. Tehran has long insisted that its atomic program is for domestic energy only and that it has no intention of weaponizing its fissile material.

But disagreements on enrichment research and the pace of lifting sanctions threatened to scupper a deal that could end a 12-year standoff between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

“The two sticking points are the duration and the lifting of sanctions,” an Iranian official said earlier in the day. “The two sides are arguing about the content of the text. Generally, progress has been made.”

Officials had all along played down expectations for the talks, in the Swiss city of Lausanne.

For days they have been trying to agree on a brief document of several pages outlining key headline numbers to form the basis of a future agreement. Officials said they hoped to be able to announce something, though one Western diplomat said it would be “incomplete and kick some issues down the road.”

The real deadline in the talks, Western and Iranian officials had said, is not Tuesday but June 30.

The parties have twice extended their deadline for a long-term agreement, after reaching an interim accord in November 2013.

Despite the June deadline, the urgency for this week is high, particularly because of domestic opposition in both Iran and the U.S.

The U.S. Congress warned that it will consider imposing new U.S. sanctions on Iran if there is no agreement this week, a move that U.S. and Iranian leaders say would effectively derail the diplomatic efforts.

“With Congress, the Iranian hawks and a Middle East situation where ‎nobody’s exactly getting on, I’m not convinced we’ll get a second chance if this fails,” the Western diplomat said.

President Barack Obama has threatened to veto any sanction moves by the Republican-dominated Congress, but even members of his party have suggested they would support new sanctions without demonstrable progress this week.

Al Jazeera and wire services