PARIS, 24 October 2021, (TON): The United States and three European powers agreed in consultations in Paris on the need for Iran to return quickly to talks amid growing alarm over a delay.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said “Rob Malley, the US envoy on Iran, spoke with his counterparts from Britain, France and Germany on how diplomacy “continues to provide the most effective pathway” on Iran.”

Price told reporters in Washington “we are united in the belief that negotiations should resume in Vienna as soon as possible and that they should resume precisely where they left off after the sixth round.”

The 2015 agreement between Iran and world powers to find a long-term solution to the now two-decade-old crisis over its controversial nuclear programme has been moribund since former US president Donald Trump walked out of the deal in May 2018.

His successor Joe Biden has said he is ready to re-enter the agreement, so long as Iran meets key preconditions including full compliance with the deal whose terms it has repeatedly violated by ramping up nuclear activities since Trump walked out.

But the Vienna-based talks through intermediaries made little headway, before being interrupted by the election of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi as Iran s president and suspended for the last four months.