Obama tackles Iran in first post-election speech
Published: Friday, November 07, 2008
20:15GMT—3:15PM/EST
OBAMA – NUCLEAR – AHMADINEJAD
Washington, 7 November (IranVNC)—US President-elect Barack Obama today said that an “international effort” was necessary to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon.
“Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon I believe is unacceptable,” AFP quoted Obama as saying in a news conference in Chicago, Illinois, in response to the only foreign-policy question of the day.
He continued: “We have to mount an international effort to prevent that from happening,” and also called for an end to Iran’s “support of terrorist organizations”.
The Islamic Republic has rejected Western allegations that its nuclear program is aimed at building a nuclear weapon, and says it is seeking only to generate peaceful nuclear energy.
Obama, who was speaking in his first public address since winning the 4 November US presidential elections, reminded the international community that he would not take office until 20 January.
“I have to reiterate once again, we only have one president at a time. I want to be very careful that we are sending the right signals to the world as a whole,” the president-elect said.
Asked to comment on a message from Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad published yesterday in Iranian media, Obama replied that he would review it and “respond accordingly.”
He added: “It has only been three days since the election, and obviously, how we approach and deal with a country like Iran is not something that we should, you know, simply do in a knee-jerk fashion.”
In his message, which was published yesterday in Iran’s official media, Ahmadinejad congratulated Obama on his win and called for “accountability to the demands for true and fundamental change in the domestic and foreign policies of the US government”.
Obama’s election was also addressed by a leading cleric in Tehran’s Friday prayer sermon today.
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, Secretary of the influential Guardian Council, said that despite all of Obama’s campaign promises of change, he does not expect the president-elect to fundamentally change the relationship between Iran and the U.S.
Sources: Agence France-Presse, IRIB in Persian, IranVNC correspondent
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