LONDON
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has said that he is not optimistic about reaching a nuclear deal with Iran by the November 24 deadline.
France, China, Russia, Germany, the United States and Britain are negotiating with Iran about its nuclear enrichment capacity and how quickly international sanctions should be lifted.
Speaking to journalists in the Latvian capital of Riga on Thursday, Hammond said: "I’m not optimistic that we can get everything done by Monday.
"But I think if we make some significant movement we may be able to find a way of extending the deadline to allow us to get to the final deal if we’re making a good progress in the right direction.”
'No threat'
"We do very much want to see a deal done with Iran, but we don't want to do a bad deal. Better, then, no deal than a bad deal,” he added.
"The right deal with Iran has to be one which gives us the assurance we need that Iran’s program is exclusively targeted at civil nuclear use, has no military dimension at all and where Iran’s enriched capacity is limited to a level which does not present any military threat," he said.
The nuclear-armed U.K., U.S. and Israel have all opposed nuclear enrichment being carried out by Iran.
Iran has insisted its enrichment is for civil purposes and not to develop any nuclear weapons.
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