DHAKA: Sweden’s foreign minister, the latest high-level Western diplomat to visit Teheran, said on Tuesday that a comprehensive international nuclear agreement with Iran is possible within six months, media reported.

‘If there is a good will on both sides a deal is possible within a very ambitious time scale of six months,’ Sweden foreign minister Carl Bildt said during a joint press conference with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif, reports The Straits Times.

Iran clinched the interim deal in November with the P5+1 group, Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany, under which it agreed to curb its controversial nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.

The six-month agreement, which took effect on January 20, is intended to buy time to negotiate a comprehensive accord that would reassure Western powers that Iran’s nuclear programme is entirely peaceful, as Tehran has long maintained.

BDST: 1937 HRS, FEB 04, 2014