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Iran's UN demand emerges as hitch in nuclear talks

Iran's demand for quick lifting of UN Security Council resolutions emerges as another thorny issue of dispute in nuclear negotiations underway with world powers.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (R) greets Iran's President Hassan Rouhani before a meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York September 23, 2014. REUTERS/Jewel Samad/Pool (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS ENVIRONMENT) - RTR47FMP

WASHINGTON — Iran's insistence that UN Security Council resolutions on its nuclear program be lifted at the front end of a final nuclear deal has emerged as an unexpected sticking point in the negotiations, diplomats say.

Western diplomats said if a final nuclear deal is reached, the United States and European Union would quickly waive and then lift unilateral, proliferation-related economic sanctions on Iran that would provide a rapid windfall to Iran's economy. (However, the US trade embargo on Iran, enacted after Iran's 1979 seizure of the US Embassy and hostage crisis, would remain in place, a senior US official said.) A new UN Security Council resolution outlining the deal and what steps all sides had agreed on would also be passed, Western diplomats said.

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