U.S., Iran talk up nuke talks

UNITED NATIONS - President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hasan Rouhani spoke up forcefully Tuesday at the U.N. for a resumption of stalled Iranian nuclear negotiations, but they gave no ground on the long-held positions that have scuttled previous attempts to break the talks’ impasse.

The leaders’ separate appearances at the United Nations General Assembly came amid heightened speculation about a thaw in U.S.-Iranian relations after Rouhani’s election. Officials from both countries had quietly negotiated the possibility of a meeting between Obama and Rouhani, but U.S. officials said the Iranians told them Tuesday that an encounter would be“too complicated” given uncertainty about how it would be received in Tehran.

Such a meeting would have marked the first time a U.S. and Iranian leader had met in 36 years. Instead, Obama and Rouhani traded hopeful messages during public addresses hours apart at the annual General Assembly meetings.

Obama declared that it was worth pursuing diplomacy with Iran even though skepticism persists about Tehran’s willingness to back up its recent overtures with concrete actions to answer concerns that the Iranians are working to develop a nuclear bomb.

“The roadblocks may prove to be too great, but I firmly believe the diplomatic path must be tested,” Obama said. He added that while he was “encouraged” by Rouhani’s election, the new president’s “conciliatory words will have to be matched by actions that are transparent and verifiable.”

Rouhani was not in the General Assembly hall for Obama’s speech, though Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, was.

Rouhani, making his international debut, said Iran was ready to enter talks “without delay,” and insisted that his country was not interested in escalating tensions with the U.S. He vigorously denied that his country was seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

“Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction have no place in Iran’s security and defense doctrine and contradict our fundamental religious and ethnical convictions,” Rouhani declared. “Our national interests make it imperative that we remove any and all reasonable concerns about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”

But Rouhani reiterated Iran’s right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enriching uranium - a process that can be used to produce fuel for weapons or energy.

On two conditions - that world powers recognize that right and that all nations’ nuclear programs are for peaceful purposes only - he said, Iran “is prepared to engage immediately in time-bound and result-oriented talks to build mutual confidence and removal of mutual uncertainties with full transparency.”

He strongly criticized the economic sanctions that have been imposed on Iran as part of the effort to persuade its leaders to open its nuclear programs to international inspection. The sanctions have badly hurt Iran’s economy, and Rouhani called them “violent” in their impact. He also said U.S. drone strikes that kill civilians in the name of fighting terrorism should be condemned.

President Francois Hollande of France echoed some of Obama’s assertions in his General Assembly speech, saying he expected Iran to provide “concrete gestures which will show that this country renounces its military nuclear program even if it clearly has the right to pursue its civilian program.”

The U.S. and its allies have long suspected that Iran is trying to produce a nuclear weapon, though Tehran has consistently said its nuclear activities are only for producing energy and for medical research.

Obama said Tuesday that he was putting Secretary of State John Kerry in charge of pursuing the prospect of a nuclear agreement with Iran. Kerry, along with representatives from five other world powers, will meet Thursday with Zarif.

If Kerry and Zarif hold one-on-one talks on the sidelines of that meeting, it would mark the first direct engagement in six years between a U.S. secretary of state and an Iranian foreign minister. A spokesman for Zarif said Thursday’s meeting indeed would mark the beginning of a “new era” in relations with the West.

A post on Zarif’s Twitter account noted “a historic opportunity to resolve the nuclear issue.” But it said Washington, along with other world powers, needs “to adjust its posture commensurate with the new Iranian approach.”

ISRAELI RESPONSE

The potential for direct engagement between the U.S. and Iran was being closely watched by Israel, which has long sought tough punishments against Tehran in retaliation for its nuclear program.

After Rouhani’s speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced deep skepticism about the new Iranian president’s outreach to the West, saying the world “should not be fooled” and must keep up the pressure on Tehran’s suspected nuclear program.

“This is precisely the Iranian plan - to talk and buy time in order to develop the capability of achieving a nuclear weapon,” Netanyahu said. “The international community must test Iran’s actions, not its words.”

Netanyahu said he would discuss the matter with Obama at a White House meeting next week, and he welcomed Obama’s pledge that Iranian words be matched with “transparent and verifiable” action.

Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be a threat to its existence, citing Iran’s repeated calls for Israel’s destruction, its sophisticated arsenal of weapons and its support for Israel’s bitterest Arab enemies. Hezbollah in Lebanon, to Israel’s north, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, on Israel’s southern flank, possess tens of thousands of rockets and missiles provided by Iran.

Netanyahu has issued four demands for halting Iran’s nuclear program. He says Iran must stop enriching uranium, a key step in developing a nuclear weapon; ship its stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country; close a heavily fortified underground enrichment facility; and not make plutonium, another possible path to nuclear weapons. He also has said any diplomatic activity must be accompanied by a “credible” military threat.

Netanyahu instructed Israel’s U.N. delegation to boycott Rouhani’s speech and walk out of the General Assembly.

“It’s a good thing the Israeli delegation wasn’t in the hall,” Netanyahu said. “I will not allow the Israeli delegation to be part of this cynical public relations show by a regime that denies the Holocaust and calls for our destruction.”

Netanyahu said Rouhani’s address was filled with “hypocrisy,” saying that while the Iranian president was talking of peace, his forces were aiding Syria in the slaughter of civilians.

He also accused Iran of supporting terrorists in “dozens” of countries, developing long-range missiles and pushing forward with its nuclear program.

In his U.N. address, Rouhani welcomed Syria’s acceptance of the international treaty to ban chemical weapons and said “access by extremist terrorist groups to such weapons is the greatest danger to the region.” Iran is one of the closest allies of the Syrian regime, which frequently blames terrorist groups for fomenting the civil war there.

Rouhani also warned that any threat or use of force in Syria “will only lead to further exacerbation of violence and crisis in the region.”

He proposed that the U.N. consider a new project, “The World Against Violence and Extremism,” or WAVE, and urged all nations and organizations to join.

In his own speech, Obama emphasized three areas: the prospect of diplomacy with Iran, the civil war and the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and the Middle East peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, which has recently restarted under the prodding of Kerry.

“The time is now ripe for the entire international community to get behind the pursuit of peace,” he said. “Already, Israeli and Palestinian leaders have demonstrated a willingness to take significant political risks.”

On Iran, Obama mixed hope with wariness, saying that three decades of estrangement would not be repaired quickly.

“I don’t believe this difficult history can be overcome overnight - the suspicion runs too deep,” Obama said. “But I do believe that if we can resolve the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, that can serve as a major step down a long road toward a different relationship - one based on mutual interests and mutual respect.”

For Iranians, an important point in Obama’s speech was the mention of the “many tens of thousands” of Iranians who suffered in chemical attacks during the 1980-88 war with Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein, who was backed at the time by Washington. It is likely to be perceived as gesture of the “respect” demanded by leaders in Tehran, analysts said.

Obama also was seen as appealing to Iran’s ruling clerics by declaring that Washington does not seek “regime change” and citing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s nearly decade-old religious edict, or fatwa, that describes nuclear arms as contrary to Islamic values.

Obama’s address was seen live by only a limited audience in Iran.

The main Farsi channels on state TV did not carry the speech, which was run by the state-run Arabic-language channel Al Alam and the English-language Press TV.

Before the speech, Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency reported that a group of students at Tehran University said possible direct talks with Washington should occur only after Obama makes an “official apology” to Iran for past policies, including Washington’s backing of a 1953 coup that toppled a democratically elected government and reinstalled the Western-friendly shah.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the shah and destroyed ties between Iran and the United States. Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 hostages for 444 days.

Information for this article was contributed by Edith M. Lederer, Julie Pace, Brian Murphy, Lara Jakes and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Mark Landler, Somini Sengupta, Michael R. Gordon, Rick Gladstone and David D. Kirkpatrick of The New York Times.