Iran - Election

Obama: talks with Tehran will go on

Article published on the 2009-06-26 Latest update 2009-06-26 18:06 TU

People light candles during a demonstration in support of the Iranian opposition, Berlin, 25 June 2009
(Photo: Reuters)

In Washington on Friday, US President Barack Obama said that direct dialogue with Tehran would be affected by events in Iran, but that multilateral talks will continue.

"There is no doubt that any direct dialogue or diplomacy with Iran is going to be affected by the events of the last several weeks," Obama said. But "you're going to continue to see some multilateral discussions with Iran," he added.

Iran's election watchdog is to set up a panel, including representatives of defeated candidates, to report on the disputed poll, its spokesman said on Friday.

Iran's Guardian Council said that the election contained no fraud. The Council's spokesperson, Abbasali Kadkhodai, was emphatic, "after 10 days of examination, we did not see any major irregularities."

He added, "we have had no fraud in any presidential election and this one was the cleanest election we have had. I can say with certainty that there was no fraud in this election."

Also, the Group of Eight leading powers on Friday said that violence should end "immediately" in Iran and called for a solution to the post-election political crisis. 

After meeting in Trieste, Italy, the G8 foreign ministers released a statement saying "we are concerned about the aftermath of the Iranian presidential election."

"We fully respect the sovereignty of Iran," it said. "At the same time we deplore post-election violence which led to the loss of lives of Iranian civilians and urge Iran to respect fundamental human rights."

Russia had warned against condemning Iran with tough language, arguing that this could trigger a backlash from Iran and jeopardise progress on the nuclear issue.