Vienna: World powers and Iran began looking at giving themselves more time to reach a nuclear deal, as they struggled to overcome major gaps barely 24 hours before a deadline.
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany (the P5+1) have been locked in talks with Iran for months to turn an interim deal struck in Geneva that expires on Monday into a lasting accord, late Sunday.
Such an agreement, after a 12-year standoff, is aimed at easing fears that Tehran will develop nuclear weapons under the guise of its civilian activities, an ambition it hotly denies.
But a last-ditch diplomatic blitz in Vienna this week to secure a deal appeared to be unable to bridge major differences, forcing negotiators to question whether more time is a better option.
"Our focus remains on taking steps forward toward an agreement, but it is only natural that just over 24 hours from the deadline we are discussing a range of options both internally and with our P5+1 partners," a senior US State Department official said.
"An extension is one of those options. It should come as no surprise that we are also engaged in a discussion of the options with the Iranians," added the official.
An Iranian source confirmed that US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif, meeting for the sixth time since Thursday, "discussed" an extension.
"There is nothing concrete yet," he added. British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said however that the parties would still make a "big push today morning to try and get this across the line".
"Of course if we're not able to do it, we'll then look at where we go from there," he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a key player who arrived yesterday afternoon, also met both Zarif and Kerry separately as well as German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Britain and France's ministers had also arrived in Vienna while their Chinese counterpart was due early on Sunday.
"What a deal would do is take a big piece of business off the table and perhaps begin a long process in which the relationship not just between Iran and us but the relationship between Iran and the world, and the region, begins to change," US President Barack Obama in an ABC News interview.
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