U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to meet his Iranian counterpart on Friday in Paris to continue talks on Iran's nuclear policy, Reuters reported.
In what will be their second face-to-face encounter this week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif will meet Kerry at his hotel in Paris to pick up where the two left off on Wednesday.
Kerry and Zarif spent six hours in Geneva Wednesday, where they "had substantive meetings for approximately five hours today and they discussed a broad range of issues with a small group of staff from each side," according to a senior State Department official.
The meetings are part of a larger nuclear negotiation effort between six world powers - the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, Russia and China - and Iran.
Reaching a deal to curb Iran's nuclear program and prevent the country from developing a nuclear weapon is seen by world powers as crucial to preventing the Middle East from erupting into a wider war.
Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes only, and claims it has no plans to develop a nuclear arsenal, but Western powers have long suspected otherwise.
In exchange for Iran limiting its nuclear program, the West has said it will gradually ease economic sanctions imposed on the country, sanctions that have hurt the livelihoods of 85 percent of Iranians, according to a 2013 Gallup poll.
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said last week that the U.S. cannot be trusted to lift sanctions once a nuclear deal is reached, suggesting instead that Iran should build an "economy of resistance."
If a nuclear agreement is reached, the U.S. will simply impose more demands, Khamenei said, The Associated Press reported.
A top Senate Republican, Bob Corker of Tennessee, said Thursday that Congress will soon move to vote on legislation that would impose additional sanctions on Iran, despite warnings from the White House that doing so could imperil ongoing negotiations, according to Fox News.
In November, negotiators failed for the second time to meet a self-imposed deadline, and issued a new agreement deadline for June 30.
