President Hassan Rohani appeared at a press conference before leaving for New York to attend the United Nations’ General Assembly, saying the trip is “an opportunity to represent the view of the people of Iran to the leaders and representatives of other countries.”
The General Assembly will convene on Wednesday September 24 with representatives from 192 countries.
Reaching a final agreement in the nuclear negotiations with 5+1 is a top priority of the Iranian delegation, and the president referred to the ongoing talks in New York with the 5+1 representatives.
Rohani said that any request for transparency in the framework of the regulations and mutual respect from the 5+1 is acceptable to Iran.
President Rohani implicitly referred to the international efforts to confront the ISIS threat, saying that if countries aim to use terrorism as an excuse to solidify their presence in the region, they are mistaken. “They must take serious lessons from their past and take a firm decision to combat terrorism,” the Iranian president said.
This will be Rohani’s second trip to New York to attend the UN General Assembly. Last year he arrived in New York a little over a month after he was elected president, and his telephone conversation with the U.S. president, in the context of the Iranian Supreme Leader’s recommendation to show “heroic flexibility”, became a hot topic of speculation about possible changes in Iranian-U.S. relations.
The Iranian nuclear negotiators have held direct talks with a number of U.S. representatives in the past year, but language used by the Iranian establishment and conservative factions remains highly critical of the possibility of direct relations with the United States.
