US President Barack Obama and his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, stood united yesterday in efforts to thwart Iran’s disputed nuclear ambitions and bring about a Mideast peace that provides for separate Israeli and Palestinian states.
“We want peace. We want dialogue. We want to help them develop. But we do not want military nuclear weapons to spread and we are clear on that,” said Sarkokzy, who hosted Obama for private talks in this Normandy city before commemorating the D-Day invasion that cemented the trans-Atlantic alliance.
Sarkozy said he worries about “insane statements” by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
PHOTO: AP
Obama, in turn, reaffirmed that there must be “tough diplomacy” with Tehran and said Iran’s actions are contrary to its leaders’ insistence that the country does not seek nuclear weapons.
Obama said he wants to see greater US-Russian efforts to limit nuclear weapons and said that his work against nuclear proliferation and the efforts toward that end by other countries should signal Iran’s leaders that they are not being singled out for rebuke.
He also suggested a new, stronger response to North Korean nuclear and missile testing, saying that he prefers continued diplomacy unless Pyongyang refuses to accept international calls to end to its nuclear program.
“Diplomacy has to involve the other side engaging in serious way, and we have not seen that reaction from North Korea,” Obama said, promising to take “a very hard look” at next steps. “I don’t think there should be an assumption that we will simply continue down a path in which North Korea is constantly destabilizing the region and we continue to act in the same ways.”
On other matters, Sarkozy also agreed with Obama’s call for Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank, and said his country would take some detainees currently held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility, as the US has asked.
The US leader welcomed the support and said that he and Sarkozy will work “in close collaboration” on many issues, including anti-terrorism strategy.
Obama and his wife Michelle and Sarkozy and model-turned-singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy greeted each other warmly yesterday with grins, hugs and, for the women, double kisses on the cheeks outside of the French Prefecture in Caen, as several hundred people cheered, shrieked and waved small French and US flags from behind security barriers around the regional headquarters. Police surrounded the crowd from all sides.
Obama and Sarkozy shook a few of the onlookers’ hands and listened to each country’s national anthem in the gravel palace courtyard before heading down the red carpeted walkway to retreat inside for private talks over lunch.
Obama arrived in Paris on Friday night from Germany. Michelle Obama and their two daughters paid a surprise visit to the Eiffel Tower on Friday night.
It is the first excursion abroad as presidential daughters for 10-year-old Malia and seven-year-old Sasha, who were expected to stay in France until at least tomorrow while their father leaves today.
Following their lunch meeting, Obama and Sarkozy were to turn their attention to the icons and heroes of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Obama was to give the last speech of his international tour on what is technically US soil, at the American Cemetery on Omaha Beach, where he was to host the leaders of France, Britain and Canada.
Thousands of veterans and active servicemen and women will be on hand to honor the 65th anniversary of the invasion, pivotal to the Allied victory against the Nazis.
US, British and other veterans rode a bus from Caen to Colleville-sur-Mer for the invitation-only afternoon ceremony on Omaha Beach.
“You get an invite like that, you don’t turn it down,” said Isaac Phillips of Carlton, Georgia.
Now 84, he was four days shy of his 20th birthday when he climbed into the Atlantic off Omaha with the 22nd Infantry Regiment.
“The water was up to here,” he said, waving a steady, wizened hand at shoulder height.
“We didn’t know what was going on. There were fellows who hadn’t ever seen blood before. You lose your faith, your sense of what’s right,” he said, his blue-gray eyes clouding over at the memory of the ensuing days of warfare in Normandy’s pastoral villages.
On Friday, Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany and said the leaders of today must not rest against the spread of evil. He challenged Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who casts doubt on the Holocaust, to visit Buchenwald, calling it the “ultimate rebuke” to those who deny its horrors ever happened.
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