Iran FM: Obama win shows Americans want change
Published: Wednesday, November 05, 2008
15:30GMT—10:30AM/EST
MOTTAKI – OBAMA – US – REACTIONS
Washington, 5 November (IranVNC)—Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, today said that Obama’s election yesterday was a “clear sign” that Americans wanted changes in government policies.
“The election of Barack Obama to the US presidency is a clear sign of the demands and interests of the people of that country for fundamental changes in the domestic and foreign policies of America,” Mottaki was quoted by the official IRNA news agency telling reporters today.
Mottaki continued: “We hope that the new US government will, in practice, fulfill the demands of the people of that country and distance itself from the wrong approaches of the current politicians.”
Washington cut diplomatic ties with Tehran after the take-over of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 by revolutionary Islamic students, but Ali Aqamohammadi, an aide to Iran’s supreme leader today said the election of Obama held could improve ties between the two countries.
“There is a capacity for the improvement of ties between America and Iran if Obama pursues his campaign promises, including not confronting other countries as Bush did in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also concentrating on America’s state matters and removing the American people’s concern,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
And the pro-reform E’temaad Melli newspaper quoted Mohammadreza Tajik, an advisor to Iran’s former pro-reform president, Mohammad Khatami, as arguing along the same lines, the hard-line Kayhan daily reported today.
Tajik wrote that if Obama won, he would “open the door of direct talks” and added: “Should he come, the nightmare of war will disappear, should he come, the autumn of the relations between the two countries will turn into spring.”
And Kayhan Newspaper today also suggested that the Democrat’s win could embolden pro-reform figures hoping to stand in the country’s 12 June 2009 presidential elections.
“The possibility of the Democratic candidate’s victory in the American presidential elections has already brought some who profess reformism, to elation,” the newspaper wrote.
Some “pro-reform media” have called Obama’s win “a sign of the victory of the pro-reform candidate in Iran’s future election,” the newspaper wrote.
Sources: IRNA in Persian, Reuters, Kayhan Newspaper in Persian
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