EU Diplomat Says Trump Cannot Renegotiate Iran Nuclear Deal

Brussels, Jan 17 (Antara/Reuters) - A senior European Union diplomat said on Tuesday that the foreign policy team of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump had misunderstood the Iran nuclear deal and that it was not up for renegotiation.

Trump, a New York property magnate who will take office on Friday after a shock election victory late last year, has called the 2015 accord "the worst deal ever negotiated" and threatened to annul it or seek a better agreement.

"There is a misunderstanding that you can renegotiate this agreement. This cannot be done," Helga Schmid, Secretary General of the European Union's foreign policy service in Brussels, said of the deal brokered by the bloc between Iran, the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China.

"It's a multilateral agreement, that cannot be renegotiated bilaterally," she said, pointing out that the deal has also been endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.

The deal has given Iran some sanctions relief in exchange for scaling down its nuclear programme and the EU has been in touch with Trump's foreign policy advisers to discuss the need to preserve it.

Despite their often fraught ties, the EU says it is in full agreement with China and Russia over the need to keep alive the deal, which could also open up the Iranian market after a decade of sanctions, a prospect both Tehran and foreign companies

welcome.

Iran has also said it would not renegotiate after Trump's Secretary of State nominee, Rex Tillerson, said he would recommend a "full review" of the accord. He has, however, stopped short of rejecting it outright.

    

* Editing by Hugh Lawson