Zarif to Attend UN General Assembly Next Month

"Advance planning for the foreign minister's trip is in progress. Besides conducting UN-related affairs, we are hopeful of having successful negotiations with foreign officials on the sidelines," ISNA reported Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying on Monday.

The annual gathering starts on September 12 and is expected to last until December or January, as usual.

During his stay in New York, Zarif is likely to hold a meeting with his counterparts from P5+1 (the US, UK, France, China and Russia, plus Germany), with which he negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iranian nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, announced on Sunday Zarif will probably call for a ministerial meeting involving signatories to the deal.

At issue would be Iran's grievances over the uncooperative US approach toward the deal, which were aired during the administration of former American president, Barack Obama, and have been intensified since he was replaced by Donald Trump.

The controversial president has been deeply antagonistic toward the multilateral pact and is currently looking for pretexts to pull out of it.

Qasemi said a New York trip by President Hassan Rouhani for attending the UNGA gathering of world leaders, known as the General Debate, is still under consideration.

Rouhani, who was reelected in a landslide in May, has attended all General Debates since he first took office in 2013.

According to a preliminary list of speakers posted on the UNGA website, Rouhani is due to deliver a speech on September 20 in the General Debate, which convenes a day earlier and lasts until September 25.

END