Barack Obama - Hillary Clinton

Obama-Clinton debate tackles Iran

Thursday 17 April 2008

In a televised debate before Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary, US presidential rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama vowed to defend Israel against Iranian attack, but disagreed on how Iran could be engaged on its nuclear ambitions. (Report: A. Roy)

Special Report The race to the White House

Thursday 17 April 2008

The Democratic White House hopefuls vowed Wednesday to defend Israel against any Iranian attack but differed on how to engage the Islamic republic over its nuclear ambitions.

At a televised debate ahead of next Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama agreed that a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable.

Both called for diplomacy but Obama went further in renewing a promise of "direct talks" at a leaders' level with Tehran, along with other US foes.

Iran should be presented with "carrots and sticks," the Illinois senator said, while stressing "they should also know that I will take no options off the table when it comes to preventing them from using nuclear weapons or obtaining nuclear weapons."

"We cannot permit Iran to become a nuclear weapons power," Clinton said, ruling out any summit talks and condemning President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for raising doubts about who really carried out the September 11 attacks of 2001.

But the former first lady said "we've got to begin diplomatic engagement with Iran" at a lower level of officialdom than Obama's preference for top-level contacts.

"And we want the region and the world to understand how serious we are about it," she said. "The (President George W.) Bush policy has failed. Iran has not been deterred."

Obama earlier pledged to Jewish voters here that he would do his utmost to help Israel fend off any regional threat, as he criticized ex-president Jimmy Carter for seeking to meet with Hamas leaders.

At the debate, he said: "An (Iranian) attack on Israel is an attack on our strongest ally in the region, one whose security we consider paramount.

"That would be an act of aggression that I would consider unacceptable and the United States would take appropriate action."

Clinton, whose New York senate seat represents a high proportion of Jewish voters, was more categorical.

"And we will let the Iranians know that, yes, an attack on Israel would trigger massive retaliation," she said.

"But so would an attack on those countries that are willing to go under the (US) security umbrella and forswear their own nuclear ambitions."

Barack Obama - Hillary Clinton

[1] reactions :

17/04/2008 06:41:38 Alert a moderator

Obama-Clinton debate: US-Iran talks

By Chris Morrison, Pine Bush, NY, USA -

No matter what either of them says, it will be necessary to have lower-level talks before there are high-level talks in order to prepare for the high-level talks. Otherwise there will not be a basis for the talks to go forward and they will either collapse or lead to nothing. If McCain were elected, it would be necessary for there to be talks, too, although one anticipates they would be a lot lower key and probably we wouldn't know much until they actually produced something because McCain would be afraid to own up to their existence.

It would be nice if both sides had a realistic idea of what the other one's interests and goals were and how to reach them, how the world looks to them, as well as their idea of the other side's idea of them. Then they will have an idea of how to proceed. All the characters on both sides are capable of this, although I am not holng my breath.