Macron holds firm line on Iran deal and climate
French president Emmanuel Macron yesterday insisted that landmark agreements on Iran and climate change would not change, as he nudged US president Donald Trump to return to the fold.
Mr Macron, appearing for the first time at the annual United Nations gathering of world leaders, and Mr Trump on Monday held their latest meeting, which appeared to be friendly but did not bridge differences.
Mr Trump devoted much of his address at the General Assembly to denouncing Iran, calling the seven-nation agreement on Tehran’s nuclear programme championed by his predecessor Barack Obama an “embarrassment to the United States”.
But Mr Macron said the 2015 deal, reached between Tehran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, was a “solid, robust agreement that verifies that Iran will not build a nuclear weapon”.
“To reject it now without proposing anything else would be a grave error and not respecting it would be irresponsible,” he told the assembly.
Mr Macron acknowledged concerns that the agreement does not cover activities after 2025 or touch on other western and regional concerns about Iran, such as its missile programme.
He called for diplomacy to address the issues, saying: “Let’s be stricter but let’s not unravel agreements that have already brought security.”
Mr Trump has declared that the US will pull out of the Paris climate accord, making the world’s largest economy and second-largest carbon emitter one of three outsiders, alongside Syria and Nicaragua, which wanted a stronger deal.
Mr Macron said “the door will be open” for the US to enter the agreement reached in the French capital but vowed: “This agreement will not be renegotiated.”
“Unravelling this accord would be to destroy a pact between nations and generations,” he said.
Under the accord signed by 195 nations, each government sets its own plan to curb carbon emissions and meet a global goal of keeping the rise in temperatures this century within 2°C above pre-industrial levels.