N-deal with Iran to benefit international community: UN official

The deputy secretary-general of the United Nations says a final nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers will serve the interests of the international community.

During a ceremony in Tehran marking the 69th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations, Jan Eliasson on Wednesday expressed hope that talks between Iran and the P5+1 group would be productive.

Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the United States, France, Britain, China, and Russia -- plus Germany are in talks to work out a final deal aimed at ending the longstanding dispute over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program as a November 24 deadline approaches.

Sources close to the Iranian negotiating team say the main stumbling block in the way of resolving the Western dispute over Iran’s nuclear energy program remains to be the removal of all the bans imposed on the Islamic Republic and not the number of centrifuges or the level of uranium enrichment.

Tehran wants the sanctions entirely lifted while Washington, under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby, insists that at least the UN-imposed sanctions should remain in place.

Elsewhere in his speech, Eliasson noted that national and international issues are nowadays tightly interwoven and no country can deal with all the issues on its own.

The UN official pointed to his three-day meetings with high-ranking Iranian officials, which will continue until Thursday, saying various regional issues, including the ISIL Takfiri threat and the war in Syria will be on the agenda of the talks.   

He also expressed concern over the spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa, saying that each and every country should play an active role in the containment of the deadly disease.