THE husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe says the UK Government is ignoring an “obvious” solution to freeing his wife from imprisonment in Iran.

Richard Ratcliffe, who is on his 19th day on hunger strike outside the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in London, condemned a lack of action from Tory ministers and said his last meeting with Liz Truss was cut short because she was going on a foreign trip. His wife has been detained in Iran since April 2016.

According to Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family, she was told by Iranian authorities that she was being detained because of the UK’s failure to pay an outstanding £400 million debt.

“I wouldn’t be camping here if the Government was doing enough,” her husband told PA outside the FCDO.

He said the Government had known for years that Iran linked Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment to debt owed to the country by the UK.

“The obvious thing that needs to be done is to settle that dispute and not allow innocent people to have their life wasted,” he told reporters.

Ratcliffe said he told Foreign Secretary Liz Truss that the Government’s approach was failing at a meeting several weeks ago.

He added: “We’ll have to meet her again. The first meeting did not go particularly well; the Foreign Office ended it early because the minister was travelling, so we’ll see at the next meeting if she’s more in command of and more persuasive in her answers.”

He made the comments ahead of a fresh round of talks with UK Government officials, who are today meeting with Iranian chiefs.

Ratcliffe, who is set to meet Foreign Office minister James Cleverly afterwards, said he was not getting his hopes up about talks between the Iranian deputy foreign minister and officials from the FCDO in London.

%image('13192626', type="article-full", alt="Iranian deputy foreign minister Bagheri Kani arrives at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in Westminster")

READ MORE: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe loses latest appeal in Iran

Asked if he was feeling optimistic, he told the PA news agency: “No, probably guarded. It’s a good sign the meeting’s happening and I don’t mean to disparage that.

“But I’ve had a lot of Foreign Office meetings where we’ve gone in with high expectations and come out deflated.

“I’m hoping the needle has moved in the last couple of weeks and there’s a realisation that the status quo isn’t enough.”

Ratcliffe said the meeting “wasn’t on the cards until we started the protest, so there have been some effects”.

He said the political stance of the new Iranian deputy foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, could influence talks over freeing his wife, “Their reputation is more hardline, which means more difficult negotiation, but at the same time there’s probably less infighting on the Iranian side,” the hunger striker explained.

“Part of the tension in previous years was that the government had one position and the Revolutionary Guard – the ones holding Nazanin – had a different one.

“I would suspect there’s less shadow foreign police.”

Ratcliffe said he was not planning to immediately end his hunger strike.

He told PA: “It’s definitely feeling harder and it’s definitely feeling like we’re in the last few days, but certainly able to go today and see what happens in the meeting of the ministers.

“We’re not going to be able to do it for much longer because my body is saying so.

“I think we are most likely to still be camping after the meeting, but I suppose that’s a decision to make then.”

He said a doctor had just checked him over and that he was in good condition.

Before Thursday’s meeting, a Foreign Office spokesman said: “We will urge Iran to take the opportunity to swiftly conclude the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) (nuclear) deal on the table.

“We will also be using this opportunity to again press firmly for the immediate release of our unfairly detained British nationals.”

Former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt has described Iran as “an absolutely despicable regime that sponsors terrorism across the Middle East”, but said the UK should pay its debt to the country.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme on day 19 of Ratcliffe’s hunger strike, Hunt said: “We have contracts with countries all over the world, some of them nicer, some of them nastier, and we are a country that pays our debts.

“If this was ransom money I would be saying we should not pay it, and I’ve said that to Richard, however painful that sounds, because you just encourage more hostage-taking.

“But this is not ransom money. This is a debt. An international court has said so. The Defence Secretary has said so.

“We should pay it because it is an irritant to relations and whether or not it should be linked to Nazanin’s case, the Iranians certainly do make that linkage.”