Iran Press- Iran/ Speaking to reporters and journalists on Tuesday, foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said as far as Europe's commitments vis-a-vis the JCPOA is concerned, in the recent Vienna meeting, the EU as well as the 4+1 Group made clear their commitment to the nuclear deal, but as we said in Vienna, we want to see practical steps, not just verbal commitment, from the EU and the 4+1 Group. We will decide based on the practical steps taken by the EU, and next week in our meeting with the 4+1 Group, we shall assess the practical steps taken by the 4+1 Group.
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Turning to his visit to New York, Zarif said: "The visit to New York is a very good opportunity for the country’s diplomacy and is at the highest level of presidency."
Zarif, also touched upon the upcoming visit of President Hassan Rouhani to New York for the annual UN General Assembly, according to a Mehr News Agency report.
The Iranian foreign minister made the remarks on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of an exhibition dedicated to showcasing the role of the foreign ministry in the course of the 8 year war of 1980-88 imposed on Iran by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam.
Zarif added: “Rouhani will address the General Assembly and will hold bilateral and trilateral meetings on the sidelines of the event which provides a unique opportunity for all countries. If you take a look at this year list of participants you can see that there are 95 heads of states, including presidents and kings, and 38 prime ministers who are in charge of governments of their countries will attend the event which means more than two third of the member states of the UN are attending the event.”
In further remarks Zarif said: “About UN Security Council, it seems from the published articles that the Americans have changed their mind about the first proposed agenda. Because they have found out that if they were to hold such a thing and hold a meeting in the UNSC on Iran, the meeting would turn into a trial session against US while it could have been a session against all internal norms. Because the only UNSC resolution about Iran was the UNSCR2231 and the only violator of it was the US itself and even the US is trying to force the other countries of the world to violate that resolution.”
Commenting further foreign minister Zarif said: “It is true that some companies have temporarily left Iran but the fact is that these continuous repetition of threats by US is because of problems they have faced in the international community and they had these very same problems for holding an anti-Iran session of UNSC. What I read from some papers today was that they have changed the meeting to a limited meeting with a title other than Iran to discuss some other issues. However, the Americans have taken advantage of all chances to utter baseless words and to charge irrelevant accusations against Iran which are rather relevant to Americans and they should be charged with those accusations.”
Turning to his meetings with former US secretary of state, John Kerry Zarif said: "My meetings with John Kerry were public and pre-announced, when I go to New York, they all come to visit me from the highest to lowest ranks," Zarif noted, adding "this is a normal thing, and reflects the influence of the Islamic Republic. There is a fake war ongoing there due to election-related objectives.
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