Iranian President ready for 'face-to-face' talks with Obama

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he is ready for face-to-face talks with US President Barack Obama, whom he accuses of being influenced by Israel in his global policies.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Reuters

“We are ready to sit down with Mr Obama face-to-face and put the global issues on the table, man-to-man, freely, and in front of the media and see whose solutions are better,” Ahmadinejad said on Monday.

Ahmadinejad is expected to attend the UN General Assembly meeting in New York in September.

The hardline president criticises Obama for missing “historic opportunities” to repair broken relations with Iran, but says he is ready to discuss issues concerning the international community with the president.

In a televised speech to expatriate Iranians, Ahmadinejad accused Obama of pushing a Zionist agenda and said “somebody should answer questions whether the US government is dominated by the Zionists or the Zionist regime is controlled by the US government”.

This follows a series of sanctions imposed on Iran by the UN Security Council, the US and the European Union over Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.

Ahmadinejad, under whose presidency Iran has been issued four sets of UN sanctions, has been resolute in pursuing a sensitive uranium enrichment programme which the US and other world powers want Iran to abandon.

Ahmadinejad blasted Obama and Western powers for supporting Israel, the sole if undeclared nuclear weapons power in the Middle East. “You support a country which has hundreds of atom bombs and you say ‘we have to stop Iran’ which you say will one day have a bomb. You are disgracing yourselves in the world,” he said.