Washington:US President Barack Obama on Tuesday said he has sharp differences with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the nuclear peace negotia-tions with Iran, asserting he wants to give diplomacy a chance before thinking about other options which are not attractive for either America or Israel.
“I don’t want to be coy. The Prime Minister and I have a very real difference around Iran’s sanctions,” Obama told reporters at a White House news conference along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “I have been very clear — Angela agrees with me, and David Cameron agrees with me, and the others who are a member of the negotiations agree that it does not make sense to sour the negotiations a month or two before they’re about to be completed and we should play that out.
If, in fact, we can get a deal, then we should embrace that,” Obama said in response to a question. “If we can’t get a deal, then we’ll have to make a set of decisions and, as I’ve said to Congress, I’ll be the first one to work with them to apply even stronger measures against Iran.
But what’s the rush?” Obama asked in an apparent reference to the sharp diffe-rences he has with Netan-yahu on Iranian sanc-tions.And that, I cannot agree with, because as the President of the United States, I’m looking at what the options are if we don’t get a diplomatic resolution. And those options are narrow, and they’re not attractive,” he asserted.
. “That time has been well spent. During this period of time, issues have been clarified, gaps have been narrowed, the Iranians have abided by the agreement, so this is not a circumstance in which by talking they’ve been stalling and meanwhile advancing their progra-mme,” he said.
“To the contrary, what we know is the programme has not only been frozen, but with respect to, for example, 20 per cent enri-ched uranium, they’ve reversed it, and so we’re in a better position than we were before the interim programme was set up,” he said. “Having said all that, the issues now are suffi-ciently narrowed and suffi-ciently clarified, where we’re at a point where they need to make a decision.(PTI)
