Obama admits lack of unanimity over Iran sanctions

Speaking in a joint press conference with the visiting French president, President Obama acknowledged a lack of unanimity between nations on new Iran sanctions, explaining that the powers had "not yet" closed wide gaps on the specifics of new punitive measures against Iran.

"Do we have unanimity in the international community? Not yet. And that's something that we have to work on," the US president said, admitting that Iran was a major oil producer and had a plethora of commercial partners.

Regardless of such lack of global consensus about the issue, President Obama expressed hope for tough new UN sanctions on Iran, saying that "My hope is that we are going to get this done this spring."

"I am interested in seeing that regime in place within weeks," President Obama said during his joint presser with Nicholas Sarkozy.

Sarkozy, for his part, also called for imposing new sanctions against Iran.

The comments come on the same day that the UN nuclear watchdog chief, Yukiya Amano, opposed new sanctions on Iran, arguing that imposing fresh embargos would only make the task of breaking Iran's nuclear stalemate more difficult.

Meanwhile, Russia and China, two veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council, have voiced their reluctance to back new sanctions against Iran and continue to call for a diplomatic solution to the country's nuclear issue.


/Press TV/