PARIS -US presidential candidate Barack Obama said yesterday Iran should not wait for the next administration to halt its uranium enrichment programme. Speaking at a joint news conference with French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, Senator Obama said Iran should accept the trade and technical incentives the six world powers have offered in exchange for ending its uranium enrichment.
"Iran should accept the proposals that President Sarkozy and the EU 3 plus 3 are presenting now. Don't wait for the next president because the pressure, I think, is only going to build," he said.
Messrs Sarkozy and Obama joked about their common immigrant backgrounds as, respectively, the son of a Hungarian and of a Kenyan. By the end of the news conference, Mr Sarkozy was calling Mr Obama by his first name.
"France is happy to welcome Barack Obama, firstly because he's American and the French love Americans," he said, before making a long, pointed pause during which the comment drew laughter from the travelling US press corps.
He stopped just short of actually endorsing the 46-year-old senator, but made it clear he would be happy if he won the November presidential election. "Good luck to Barack Obama. If it's him, France will be happy and if it's not him, France will be a friend of the United States of America."
Senator Obama repaid Mr Sarkozy in kind, praising him for his dynamism. "I'm asking him what he eats so that I can find out how I can always have as much energy as this man beside me. He's on the move all the time, he said.
Mr Obama's brief visit to Paris was part of a fast-paced international tour intended to counter charges that he lacks the foreign policy experience needed to be commander-in-chief. He left for London after the meeting with Mr Sarkozy.
His rival in the November election, Republican John McCain, has been sharply critical of Mr Obama's call for greater engagement with Iran, saying it was irresponsible and naive.
President George Bush, who had long opposed direct talks with Iran over its nuclear programme, sent senior diplomat William Burns to talks in Geneva last Saturday with Iranian officials.
Envoys from the US, Russia and China as well as Britain, France and Germany attended the Geneva meeting.
It also emerged yesterday that Mr Obama dropped a plan to visit wounded US troops in Germany amid concerns that the stop would be viewed as a political event. Planning for a stop at the Landstuhl regional medical centre had been in the works for three weeks. But an Obama adviser said he was told by the Pentagon that the military would consider it a campaign event. - (Reuters)