On 21 October last year Dr Hassan Rouhani, Secretary General of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, hosted a meeting in Tehran with the Foreign Ministers of the United Kingdom, France and Germany. It has given me great pleasure to welcome Dr Rouhani and my colleagues Joschka Fischer, Michel Barnier and Javier Solana to the British Ambassador's residence here in Brussels this afternoon.
The agreement we reached in Tehran laid the basis for discussions which culminated in the Paris agreement on 15 November, which was endorsed by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency on 29 November.
We are now able to move forward to the next phase. At our meeting here today, we have launched the process of negotiating long-term arrangements. The Paris agreement provides us with a stable platform on which to do so. We have agreed to set up three working parties to take the process forward.
One of the purposes of this negotiation is to provide objective guarantees that Iran's nuclear programme can be used only for peaceful purposes.
All of us here today share a determination to see progress. Some of the issues are, of course, difficult. But we are all committed to a successful outcome to the process which we began together in Tehran 14 months ago.