France on Tuesday warned that further delays in talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal could jeopardize the chances of reaching an agreement, Reuters reports.
"We are very close to an agreement. It is essential we conclude while we still can," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre told reporters in a daily briefing.
"We are concerned by the risks that further delays could weigh on the possibility of concluding."
Iran's top negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, left the talks unexpectedly on Monday for consultations in Tehran with the talks' coordinator, Enrique Mora of the European Union, saying the time had come for political decisions to be taken to end the negotiations 11 months after they began.
Iran has gradually scaled back its compliance with the 2015 deal, in response to former US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement in May of 2018, but has held several rounds of indirect talks with the US on a return to the agreement.
There have been indications that a deal between Iran and world powers could be reached within days, but on the weekend, Russia said that Western sanctions imposed over the conflict in Ukraine had become a stumbling block for the Iran nuclear deal.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected those remarks, saying the sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine "have nothing to do with the Iran nuclear deal."
In an apparent reference to Moscow's demands, Legendre said on Tuesday that France, Britain and Germany called on all parties to "adopt a responsible approach to reach an agreement."