Thread: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran is ready to talk to 'honest' Barack Obama

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran is ready to talk to 'honest' Barack Obama - Times Online



Iran’s hardline President said yesterday that his country would welcome talks with America should Barack Obama prove “honest”, a clear sign that the US leader’s recent videotaped message to the Iranian people had increased pressure on Tehran to respond.

The conciliatory comments by President Ahmadinejad show that he does not want to appear extremist towards the new US Administration before elections in June. There is an enormous desire among most Iranian voters for an end to its international isolation.

“The Iranian nation welcomes a hand extended to it, should it really and truly be based on honesty, justice and respect,” Mr Ahmadinejad said in a speech broadcast live on state television. He was responding fully for the first time to Mr Obama’s video message beamed into Iran last month, at the Persian New Year, in which the US President urged co-operation and dialogue.

“But if, God forbid, the extended hand has an honest appearance but contains no honesty in content, it will meet the same response the Iranian nation gave to Mr Bush,” Mr Ahmadinejad warned.

His comments came as the Obama Administration said last night that it will take part directly, for the first time, in existing multilateral talks with Iran over its suspected nuclear programme.

Robert Wood, a State Department spokesman, said that the US would be at the table “from now on” when senior diplomats from the five permanent members of the UN — Britain, France, China, Russia and the US — plus Germany meet Iranian officials. The group of six nations asked the EU policy chief, Javier Solana, yesterday to invite Iran to the next round of talks and, in a joint statement, urged Tehran to “engage seriously with all of us in a spirit of mutual respect”.

Mr Wood also expressed Washington’s hopes that Iran would attend the talks. “If Iran accepts, we hope this will be the occasion to seriously engage Iran on how to break the logjam of recent years and work in a co-operative manner to resolve the outstanding international concerns about its nuclear programme,” he said.

The Obama Administration’s policy towards Iran is under significant review and is aimed at resolving perhaps the most difficult foreign policy challenge the President faces: how to halt Tehran’s nuclear weapons programme.

Despite Mr Ahmadinejad’s more moderate tone, he also, in almost the same breath, made clear how difficult it will be for the West to halt its nuclear ambitions, an issue on which most Iranians are united in a feeling of nationalist pride.

Today is National Nuclear Day in Iran and in his speech Mr Ahmadinejad is expected to claim that the country has mastered the final stage of nuclear fuel production. “I will have good nuclear news for the honoured Iranian nation tomorrow,” he announced in the central city of Isfahan, where the regime has a heavy-water reactor that the West fears is being used to produce fuel for a nuclear weapon.

One breakthrough that the Iranian President could claim today is the production of natural uranium pellets at the Isfahan reactor and the assembling of nuclear fuel rods into bundles, which is the final stage in the process to produce nuclear fuel.

Most foreign analysts believe that Tehran has yet to prove that it has mastered industrial-scale enrichment of uranium. In a report on February 19 the International Atomic Energy Agency said that it could not verify if the Arak reactor was being used for peaceful, civilian uses — as Tehran claims — because international inspectors had been barred since last August.

Vali Nasr, a senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an Iran expert, told The Times that the sincerity and warmth of Mr Obama’s words to the Iranian people last month was a serious challenge to the Iranian Government because there was “such a hunger among the people for an improvement of Iran’s place in the world”.

Mr Ahmadinejad was particularly vulnerable, he said, because he faced a serious presidential challenge on the June 12 election from the former Prime Minister, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, a reformist but also one of the architects of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Other issues underscored how perilous and fragile relations with Iran remain. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said yesterday that the Administration was deeply concerned by reports that an American journalist jailed in Iran since January had been charged with espionage. Roxana Saberi, 31, is being held in Evin prison, north of Tehran. “We wish for her speedy release and return to her family,” Mrs Clinton said.

Originally Posted by min0 lee