Kerry to hold talks with Iran foreign minister Saturday

US Secretary of State John Kerry is to hold talks with his Iranian counterpart on efforts to secure a deal over Tehran’s nuclear drive, a US official said Thursday.

“Secretary Kerry will meet with Iranian Foreign Minister (Mohammad Javad) Zarif in Munich, Germany on Saturday to discuss the ongoing nuclear negotiations,” a senior State Department official said.

The top-level meeting comes as landmark negotiations involving international powers — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — and Iran aim to hammer out a complex deal on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Negotiators are eyeing the end of March for a political agreement, and June 30 as the deadline for a final pact which Washington hopes will prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

Kerry and Zarif last held direct talks January 23 on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Under an interim deal agreed in November 2013 by Tehran and the so-called P5+1 powers, Iran has frozen its uranium enrichment in exchange for limited sanctions relief.

But two deadlines for a full accord cutting off Iran’s possible pathway to an atomic bomb have been missed.

Hebrew media reports last weekend quoted officials in Jerusalem saying the ostensible looming deal would leave Iran with over 6,000 centrifuges in operation. US officials were later quoted as saying the assertion was erroneous.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday warned that reported progress on a nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers was being made on Tehran’s terms, and repeated his call for the world to bar the country from becoming a nuclear threshold state.