UNITED NATIONS — President Obama, in his first visit to the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, made progress Wednesday on two key issues, wringing a concession from Russia to consider tough new sanctions against Iran and securing support from Moscow and Beijing for a Security Council resolution to curb nuclear weapons.
The successes came as Mr. Obama told leaders that the United States intended to begin a new era of engagement with the world, in a sweeping address to the General Assembly in which he sought to clearly delineate differences between himself and the administration of President George W. Bush.
One of the fruits of those differences — although White House officials were loath to acknowledge any quid pro quo publicly — emerged during Mr. Obama’s meeting on Wednesday afternoon with President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia, the first between the two since Mr. Obama decided to replace Mr. Bush’s missile defense program in Eastern Europe with a version less threatening to Moscow.
With a beaming Mr. Obama standing next to him, Mr. Medvedev signaled for the first time that Russia would be amenable to longstanding American requests to toughen sanctions against Iran significantly if, as expected, nuclear talks scheduled for next month failed to make progress.
“I told His Excellency Mr. President that we believe we need to help Iran to take a right decision,” Mr. Medvedev said, adding that “sanctions rarely lead to productive results, but in some cases, sanctions are inevitable.”
White House officials could barely hide their glee. “I couldn’t have said it any better myself,” a delighted Michael McFaul, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser for democracy and Russia, told reporters after the meeting. He insisted nonetheless that the administration had not tried to buy Russia’s cooperation with its decision to scrap the missile shield in Europe in favor of a reconfigured system.
Privately, several administration officials did acknowledge that missile defense might have had something to do with Moscow’s newfound verbal cooperation on the Iran sanctions issue.
Whether Mr. Medvedev’s words translate into strong action once the issue moves back to the Security Council remains to be seen. American officials have been disappointed before by Moscow’s distaste for tough sanctions, and Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin seemed to cast doubt on the need for stronger sanctions just last week. But Mr. Obama also got another boost from Russia, as well as from China, when they agreed to support strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in a Security Council session scheduled for Thursday.
In an effort to lay the groundwork for toughening the treaty, the Obama administration circulated drafts of a resolution that “urges” countries to put conditions on their nuclear exports, so that international inspectors would be authorized to continue monitoring the use of some nuclear materials even if a country withdrew from the nonproliferation pact. That is a rare occurrence, but North Korea declared it was withdrawing in 2003, and inspectors were thrown out.
The Obama administration hailed the pending resolution as a significant step forward. But it would not be binding, and would become so only if the Security Council required countries to make their nuclear exports subject to such restrictions. Many countries balked at that requirement, an indication of how difficult it may prove to toughen the treaty itself when it is up for review next year.
Mr. Obama will preside over the Security Council meeting on Thursday, and is expected to call for a vote on the draft resolution. White House officials said they expected the measure to pass unanimously.
During his address to the General Assembly, Mr. Obama sought to present a kinder, gentler America willing to make nice with the world. He suggested that the United States would no longer follow the go-it-alone policies that many United Nations members complained isolated the Bush administration from the organization.
“We have re-engaged the United Nations,” Mr. Obama said, to cheers from world leaders and delegates in the cavernous hall. “We have paid our bills” — a direct reference to the former administration’s practice of withholding some payment due the world body while it pressed for changes there.
But even as Mr. Obama sought to signal a different tone, it was clear that old, entrenched issues would remain, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions and a Middle East peace process. And while much of his language was different and more conciliatory, the backbone of American policy on some issues remained similar to the Bush administration’s.
As Mr. Bush used to do before him, for instance, Mr. Obama singled out Iran and North Korea, which he said “threaten to take us down this dangerous slope.”
“I am committed to diplomacy that opens a path to greater prosperity and a more secure peace for both nations if they live up to their obligations,” Mr. Obama said.
But, he added, “if the governments of Iran and North Korea choose to ignore international standards; if they put the pursuit of nuclear weapons ahead of regional stability and the security and opportunity of their own people; if they are oblivious to the dangers of escalating nuclear arms races in both East Asia and the Middle East — then they must be held accountable.”
As he spoke, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sat in the fifth row, showing no reaction.
But a glittering array of world leaders sat in the hall for Mr. Obama’s speech, which was often interrupted by applause and the flashes of cameras, including from some delegates.
Mr. Obama said he planned to work toward a comprehensive peace deal between Israel and its Arab neighbors. He indicated again that he was impatient with the slow pace of work on interim measures like a settlement freeze. He called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to address the tough “final status” issues that had bedeviled peace negotiators since 1979.
“The goal is clear,” he said, “two states living side by side in peace and security.”
But the difficulty of achieving that goal was also on full display on Wednesday, one day after Mr. Obama held meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and admonished them to meet in person and negotiate a peace deal. The two Middle Eastern leaders and their spokesmen spent much of the day Wednesday explaining why that could not happen soon.
In an interview on NBC, Mr. Netanyahu called Israeli settlements “bedroom suburbs” of Jerusalem and suggested Israel would not withdraw from all the territory it occupied after the 1967 Middle East war. Meanwhile, the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, told The Associated Press that the two sides will “continue dealing with the Americans until we reach the agreement that will enable us to relaunch the negotiations.”
David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Boston.Wikio
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