Time to get it done, says Kerry

Iran and the US raced against the clock yesterday to close in on a nuclear deal with US Secretary of State John Kerry saying it was "time to get it done" after 18 months of intense negotiations.

"If (Iran's nuclear programme is) peaceful, let's get it done. And my hope is that in the next days, that will be possible," said Kerry, who is due to join the critical round of talks in the Swiss city of Lausanne later yesterday.

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Washington wants Iran to dramatically scale down its nuclear programme in order to extend to at least a year the "breakout" time that Iran would in theory need to produce a bomb's worth of fissile material.

The Islamic republic, reeling from the pressure of sanctions, denies wanting nuclear weapons, saying its atomic programme is for purely peaceful purposes. It wants to expand its activities.

The target is for Iran and six world powers -- the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany -- to agree the outlines of a deal by March 31 and to fine-tune the details by July 1.

Under a landmark November 2013 interim deal, Tehran stopped expanding its activities in return for minor sanctions relief. Since then the parties have been pushing for a lasting accord.