Iran and the US will start a new round of nuclear talks when US Secretary of State John Kerry meets Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Switzerland on Monday.

Later today Zarif was due to travel to Brussels to meet his British, French, German and EU counterparts.

The US will look to strike a deal to make Iran dramatically scale down its nuclear programme so that it becomes much more difficult to develop atomic weapons.

Zarif however maintains that Iran’s atomic programme is for purely peaceful purposes.

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 31st March and to fine-tune the details by 1st July.