Hopes for nuclear deal are put off again

VIENNA, Austria - Hopes for a final agreement in the Iran nuclear talks were put on ice Monday, as Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said no deal was imminent and the White House said the talks might be extended for a fourth time.

Secretary of State John Kerry huddled with Zarif on Monday afternoon, following an hour-long meeting of foreign ministers from all six nations negotiating as a bloc with Iran, known collectively as the P5+1 - the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany.

Though diplomats in the morning held out the possibility of a final agreement before the midnight expiration of an interim agreement, those hopes were dashed shortly before nightfall.

That's when Zarif, making one of his periodic appearances on the third-floor balcony of the Coburg Palace Hotel where the talks are being held, was asked by reporters on the street below whether an agreement was still possible on Monday.

"No," he answered, characterizing the mood in the closed-door negotiations as "sleepy, overworked."

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the talks would be extended again if the negotiators believe more time will lead to a successful agreement. He said the U.S. negotiating team would remain in Vienna. Kerry last week warned that the talks were not "open ended" and said the United States was prepared to walk away from them.

"What started out as rather a long list of differences has slowly ... but steadily narrowed," Earnest said Monday at a White House news briefing. "That's an indication that we are making progress toward an agreement."

"What's also true is that typically some of the most difficult issues are the ones that get kicked to the end," he added. "That's why the president is going to resist any effort to sort of fast-forward toward the closing."

It was an abrupt turnaround on a day when many expected more than a year and a half of negotiations would finally bear fruit, with Iran accepting restrictions on its nuclear program in return for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.

Part of the delay is the ponderous process of taking a draft agreement that runs close to 100 pages with its annexes, making sure it says the same thing in Persian that it does in English to minimize misunderstandings later on, and getting approval from leaders in the seven capitals.

But the talks are also snagged on a handful of substantive issues, including the pace at which sanctions would be lifted, when frozen Iranian assets will be released and how much access Tehran will grant investigators looking into whether it tried to build nuclear weapons in the past. But perhaps the biggest sticking point revolves around a U.N. embargo on conventional weapons and ballistic missiles.