U.S. PRESIDENT: IRAN HAS RIGHT TO PURSUE CIVILIAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM
PanARMENIAN.Net
03.04.2009 21:49 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The United States and Russia on Wednesday declared
that Iran has a right to pursue a civilian nuclear program, but warned
that the country must abide by an international treaty and prove that
its contentious efforts were of a "peaceful nature".
"While we recognize that under the NPT [Treaty on the Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons] Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear program,
Iran needs to restore confidence in its exclusively peaceful nature,"
U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
announced in a joint statement ahead of their first sit-down.
Striving to ease strained relations, Obama and Medvedev said in
their statement that "the era when our countries viewed each other
as enemies is long over."
They pledged to work together to limit the world’s two largest nuclear
arsenals and said they would try to put a new nuclear arms reduction
deal in place before the existing treaty expires in December.
The White House also announced that Obama was accepting Medvedev’s
invitation to visit Moscow this summer.
"Over the last several years, the relationship between our two
countries has been allowed to drift," Obama told reporters after
his meeting with Medvedev. "What I believe we’ve begun today is a
very constructive dialogue that will allow us to work on issues of
mutual interest."
Striking a similar tone with the U.S. president at his side, the
Russian president said: "I am more optimistic of the successful
development of our relations."
As for nuclear arms control, the two said in their joint statement
that, "We are instructing our negotiators to start talks immediately
on this new treaty and to report on results achieved in working out
the new agreement by July.
Their newly professed commitment to reinvigorate arms-control
initiatives that have lain dormant for years caused a stir at the
London site of a G-20 summit that seemed otherwise transfixed on a
deepening worldwide recession, Haaretz reported.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
