Senior officials from Iran and six powers negotiating with Tehran over its nuclear program will hold more talks in Montreux, Switzerland on March 5, the European Union (EU) said on Friday, according to Reuters.

The talks between political directors will be preceded by a series of bilateral meetings, EU spokeswoman Catherine Ray told reporters.

“The EU continues to make all possible efforts to facilitate these negotiations so that they end in success,” she added.

The remarks follow an announcement by the State Department on Thursday that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry would meet with Iranian nuclear negotiators in Montreux next week.

Iran and six world powers reached an interim deal in November of 2013, under which Iran committed to limit its uranium enrichment to five percent and is gradually winning access to $4.2 billion of its oil revenues frozen abroad and some other sanctions relief.

The talks were supposed to continue in order to turn the interim deal into a permanent one. However, the talks have stalled and two deadlines for a final deal have been missed, with a third one looming on July 1 and an initial deal needing to be worked out by March 31.

Earlier this week, the EU’s foreign policy chief said that an Iran nuclear deal was “at hand”.

“We cannot miss this opportunity,” Federica Mogherini said at Chatham House, a think tank in London, urging different sides to show political will ahead of a new round of talks scheduled in Geneva next week.

“A good deal is at hand if the parties will keep cooperating as they did so far and if we have enough political will from all sides to agree on a good deal and sell it domestically,” she added.

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)