Updated on
Summary
US President Barack Obama on Friday condemned as hateful, offensive and inexcusable a suggestion by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of a US government role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.Obama, in an interview with a television channel, lashed out at Ahmadinejad for the latest of what the White House called a long list of outrageous comments that would deepen Tehran's isolation from the international community. It was offensive. It was hateful, Obama said according to interview excerpts released by the White House. And particularly for him to make the statement here in Manhattan, just a little north of Ground Zero, where families lost their loved ones for him to make a statement like that was inexcusable. The United States and its Western allies are locked in a standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, which Washington believes aims to produce atomic weapons but which Tehran says is for solely peaceful purposes. The standoff has seen sanctions imposed on Tehran, a course of action Obama blames on the action of the Iranian government. Now I think it is very important to understand that the sanctions that arose this year had to do with the fact that alone among signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Iran has not been able to convince the international community that it's nuclear programme is peaceful, he said.
