'Intensive' Iran Nuclear Talks Head for Deadline

Marathon talks towards an Iran nuclear deal looked likely Friday to go down to the wire of a March 31 deadline, with negotiations in Switzerland set to break up and resume next week.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was set to leave Lausanne Saturday after almost a week of negotiations which "resume next week", State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

Iran's deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said the negotiations would begin again next Wednesday although where they would be held was unclear.

Kerry would review progress on Saturday "in Europe" with his French, German and British counterparts, Harf said. Iranian television said they would meet in Berlin.

"We've had a series of intensive discussions with Iran this week, and given where we are in the negotiations, it's an important time for high-level consultations with our partners in these talks," Harf said.

Kerry spoke by phone on Friday to Russia and China's foreign ministers, the other two major powers involved in the talks, Harf said.

"Right now more consultation and coordination is needed," Araghchi said.

Overnight U.S. President Barack Obama appealed in a Nowruz (Persian New Year) address to the Iranian "people and leaders" to seize an "historic" opportunity and begin a "brighter future".

Obama said that a "reasonable nuclear deal... can help open the door to a brighter future for you the Iranian people."

"I believe that our nations have an historic opportunity to resolve this issue peacefully -- an opportunity we should not miss," Obama said.

In an apparent response, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said it was the other side that had to make a decision.

"Iranians have already made their choice: engage with dignity. It's high time for the U.S. and its allies to chose: pressure or agreement," Zarif wrote in a message posted on his official Twitter account.

"Nowruz is the beginning of spring, and in Farsi, it means 'new day'. I hope this new day will be a new day for the entire world –- a new era of greater understanding and peace," Zarif told Kerry in Lausanne.

Iran and six world powers -- the U.S., China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany -- are seeking to agree the outlines of a deal by March 31 after more than a year of negotiations.

The mooted agreement, due to be finalized by July, is aimed at convincing the world after a standoff now in its 13th year that Iran won't build nuclear weapons under the guise of its civilian program.

The highly complex deal would likely involve Iran reducing in scope its nuclear activities, allowing ultra-tight inspections, exporting nuclear material and limiting development of new nuclear machinery.

In exchange Iran, which denies wanting nuclear weapons, would be granted staggered relief from the mountain of painful sanctions that have strangled its oil exports and hammered its economy.

Obama's Republican opponents and Israel's freshly re-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country is assumed to have nuclear weapons itself, fear the deal will not do enough to stop Iran getting the bomb.

Negotiators missed two deadlines last July and November for a deal but the pressures in Washington -- where Republicans are teeing up new sanctions legislation -- all but rule out a new extension, experts say.

Both Kerry and Zarif on Thursday spoke of "progress" in the talks but both sides have said that there remain considerable gaps still to bridge.

"I think we are pretty far from a deal," a European negotiator involved in the talks in Swiss city of Lausanne said on Thursday.

"The Iranians go back, go forward, it changes every day," the diplomat said in Lausanne.

Together with the future size of Iran's nuclear program, a key sticking point is Iran's demand to have U.N. Security Council resolutions lifted "on day one" of the accord, the European said.

"They (the Iranians) say it is a deal breaker... But there is no way we will give way on this," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

But U.S. and EU sanctions that have choked Iran's oil exports and cut its banks off from the global financial system could be suspended within six months to a year from a deal, he said.

In Brussels the leaders of Germany, France and Britain Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and David Cameron, with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, met to "take stock ... to have a clear, coordinated European position," the EU said.