Rouhani says US must lift sanctions first for any diplomatic encounter

Tehran, Dec 4, IRNA – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday that the US Administration must lift sanctions first of all for any diplomatic encounter. He made the remarks in his speech to the 26th national insurance and development conference at Milad Tower. He recalled Iran-US diplomatic encounter six years ago when he had a phone contact with former President Barack Obama coming back home from the UN General Assembly meeting in New York saying, "My advisors and the entourage convinced me to answer former US president's phone call so as to create progress in negotiations." Despite the fact that I hesitated but I accepted their suggestion, he added. "In the last moments that I was leaving New York, the US President called me and I responded." Rouhani described his shorts talks with ex-US president as a strong locomotive for moving negotiations train. We talked about the framework of negotiations and he mentioned three topics about which we were not ready to negotiate. "I told him that if you implement the first topic dealing with nuclear issues then we will put on the agenda the second and third ones," Rouhani said. The contact helped reach an agreement in Geneva in less than 100 days and sanctions in many fields were lifted, Rouhani said adding that Iran was given $700m monthly from the frozen assets in banks. The most important achievement of this temporary agreement was Iran's "right of enrichment", he noted. Rouhani said that no one got to believe that we could convince the world six powers that Iran has the right of enrichment. On the achievement of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, he said that Iran was successful to revoke all the UN resolutions about the sanctions and the resolution involving chapter seven of the UN Charter. The International lawyers had said that it is not possible for the UN to cancel six resolutions that Iran never implemented them even for one day but it happened and all the UN Resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran were revoked. He said that the JCPOA had useful impacts on Iran's economy and that Iran's economic situation became different and the insurance industry underwent satisfactory development. Follow us on Twitter @IrnaEnglish