Iran: Obama not giving up

2009-07-06 13:09

Washington - US President Barack Obama said the crackdown on opposition leaders in Iran would not deter his administration from seeking to engage the country's top leadership in direct negotiations, The New York Times reported late on Sunday.

In an interview with The Times before his departure for Moscow, Obama acknowledged the arrests and intimidation of Iran's opposition leaders, but insisted that the repression would not close the door on negotiations with the Iranian government.

"We've got some fixed national security interests in Iran not developing nuclear weapons, in not exporting terrorism, and we have offered a pathway for Iran to rejoining the international community," Obama is quoted as saying.

The president's top aides say that before Iran's disputed election, they had received back-channel indications from Iran - from emissaries who claimed to represent the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - that the country would respond to Obama's overtures this summer, the report said.

But the crackdown and the divisions among senior Iranian clerics have changed the political dynamics, and senior administration officials said they have heard nothing from Iran's leaders since, the paper noted.

In this context, the administration has been preparing for two opposite possibilities, the report said.

One has the Iranian leadership taking up Obama's offer to talk - a situation that could put Washington in an uncomfortable position, The Times said. The other has Iran rejecting negotiations.

Obama told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May that if there were no progress on the Iranian nuclear issue by the year's end, the administration would turn to other steps, including sanctions, the paper said.

Obama hinted at an even shorter schedule during the interview, according to the report.

"We will have to assess in coming weeks and months the degree to which they are willing to walk through that door," he said.

Obama declined to talk about the preparations for a tougher line, The Times said. But he said the United States now had more leverage to pressure Iran because he had succeeded in getting "countries like Russia and China to take these issues seriously".

- SAPA