WEISENHAUS, Germany ( Associated Press) — The European Union’s foreign policy chief said Friday he hopes stalled talks with Iran over the country’s nuclear program can lead to an agreement.
Talks between Tehran and world powers were in stalemate partly over Iran’s demand for the United States to lift a terrorist designation on the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of the Group of Seven major economies in Germany, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy Josep Borrell said an EU envoy visited Tehran this week For talks that “went better than expected.”
“Negotiations have stalled for two months because of this disagreement about what to do with the Revolutionary Guard,” Borrell said.
“Things like this cannot be resolved overnight, but let’s say talks are blocked and put on hold,” he said. “Which means there is a vision to reach agreement.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdullahiyan echoed Borrell’s assessment on Twitter, saying the discussion between the EU envoy and Iran’s negotiator was “another opportunity to focus initiatives on resolving the remaining issues.”
“A good and credible outcome is within reach if the US makes its decision and follows through on its commitments,” Abdullahiyan wrote.
Meanwhile, EU envoy Enrique Mora said on Friday that he was briefly detained with aides at Frankfurt airport while traveling from Tehran to Brussels in violation of diplomatic rules.
Mora said he had received “not a single explanation” from German authorities as to why he was detained. “An EU official on an official mission holding a Spanish diplomatic passport. Took away my passport and my phone,” he wrote on Twitter.
The EU ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna and the head of the EU’s Iran Task Force have also been detained, he said.
“We were kept apart,” Mora wrote. “Refusing to give any explanation for violation of the Vienna Convention.”
Neither German police nor Germany’s foreign ministry immediately responded to requests for comment.
Borrell declined to speculate on the incident, saying “the issue is over.”
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