Americas

Americas

White House says U.S. to judge Iran by actions

07 March 2012 21:57 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The White House said on Wednesday that Washington will judge Iran by its actions as the world powers agree to resume negotiations over its disputed nuclear program, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

"We will demand that Iran live up to its international obligations, that it provide verifiable assurances it is not pursuing a nuclear weapon," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One en route Charlotte, North Carolina.

"We are very clear-eyed about the way that Iran has approached negotiations in the past, and we will not relent in our efforts through sanctions and other measures to isolate and pressure Iran, " he said.

"Actions are what matter here, and we will judge Iran by its actions," he added.

The issue of Iran’s nuclear program has heated up in an election year in the United States, with Israel and its backers pressing for a hardening position by the Obama administration.

In his high-profile meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, Obama failed to persuade the hawkish leader to hold off a proposed unilateral military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months.

The president prefers a diplomacy-plus-pressure approach to the Iranian nuclear issue, calling for more time for diplomacy and sanctions to work toward stopping Iran’s uranium enrichment activities.

When asked whether he still thinks the Israelis have not made a decision on whether to launch a military strike after the meetings in Washington, Carney replied that "The Israelis themselves said so. So, yes."

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who represents Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany, said on Tuesday that she had accepted an Iranian offer to resume talks. However, the date and venue for the talks are yet to be decided.

The six powers last held talks with Iran in January 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey, but failed to make any breakthrough.

Obama had urged Iran to come to the table and negotiate in a " clear and forthright" way to prove to the international community the peaceful intentions of its nuclear program.

"They know how to do that," he said at a press conference on Tuesday. "I don’t expect a breakthrough in a first meeting. But I think we will have a pretty good sense fairly quickly as to how serious they are about resolving the issue."

Carney stressed that Iran can rejoin the international community and get some relief from the sanctions only by " satisfying its international obligations and assuring in a verifiable way that it is not pursuing nuclear weapons."