XinhuaTEHRAN, July 19 (Xinhua) — The world powers agreed to unfreeze 2.8 billion U.S. dollars of Iran’s frozen assets over the next four months, Press TV reported on Saturday.
“Over the next four months, 2.8 billion dollars will be deposited into Iran’s account in six installments,” senior nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi said on Saturday after the end of the nuclear talks in the Austrian capital Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 group, namely Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany.
“Four 500-million-dollar and two 400-million-dollar tranches will be paid to Iran at three-week intervals beginning on August 1, ” said Araqchi.
In exchange, Iran will convert its 20-percent-enriched uranium, already oxidized under the Geneva interim deal, to fuel for Tehran nuclear reactor, Araqchi was quoted as saying.
Under the deal clinched in Geneva last November, Iran was granted access to 4.2 billion dollars in past oil revenues from India and other countries. An estimated 100 billion dollars in payments for Iranian oil purchase have been blocked due to U.S. sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program.
Earlier in the day, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in Vienna that Iranian nuclear talks will be extended for another four months till November 24 as the stakeholders still have “significant gaps on core issues.”
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/business/2014-07/19/c_133496166.htm