26 September 2013 Last updated at 13:25 ET

The US and China have urged Iran to respond "positively" to an international offer over its nuclear programme, US officials say.

The call came ahead a rare high-level meeting between the US and Iran.

And Iran's President Hassan Rouhani called for a world without nuclear weapons, hours after saying Tehran wanted a deal in three to six months.

The West suspects Tehran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon, a claim strongly denied by Iran.

Iran has been negotiating over the issue since 2006 with the P5+1 - the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany.

Since Mr Rouhani's election in June, Iranian officials have reached out to the West, saying they want to address concerns over Iran's nuclear programme.

On Tuesday, Mr Rouhani told the UN General Assembly that he was prepared to engage in "time-bound and results-oriented" talks.

On Thursday, he called for stricter controls on nuclear weapons as part of a global effort to eventually rid the world of them.

"No nation should possess nuclear weapons; since there are no right hands for these wrong weapons," he said, speaking on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement at the General Assembly. (And there's the rub. Are those who do possess nukes willing to even consider this? If not, there's no deal and there's no rational reason for denying nukes to Iran.)

'Moderate course'

The P5+1 has asked Iran to halt production and stockpiling of uranium enriched to 20% - a step away from achieving a nuclear weapons capability.

It also demanded Iran shut down the Fordo underground enrichment facility.

In return, it offered to ease the sanctions that have severely affected Iran's economy.

"Both the US and China believe that Iran should co-operate with the P5+1 and should respond positively to the proposals that are on the table," a US official told journalists at the UN on Thursday.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is due to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry as well as diplomats from the UK, France, Russia, China and Germany on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly summit in New York.

It will be the highest level direct contact between the US and Iran for six years.

President Obama has welcomed the new Iranian president's more "moderate course".

He told the UN on Tuesday that the US wanted to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully, but was determined to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

Mr Rouhani has said he is fully empowered by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to negotiate on the issue.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24286548#

And there's the rub. Are those who do possess nukes willing to even consider this? If not, there's no deal and there's no rational reason for denying nukes to Iran.



Nuclear disarmament
Obama’s lonely quest
The president wants to scrap nuclear weapons. Other powers do not
Jun 22nd 2013 | WASHINGTON, DC |From the print edition

AS LONG as American presidents have commanded nuclear arsenals, they have yearned to be rid of them. These weapons “must be abolished before they abolish us”, John F. Kennedy said. Ronald Reagan dreamed of their “total elimination”. In a 2009 Prague speech Barack Obama vowed “concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons”.

Speaking in Berlin on June 19th—four years after his Prague speech was cheered, then ignored—Mr Obama tried again, announcing a series of steps towards disarmament. Some are in his gift, eg, limiting the scenarios that would trigger American nuclear strikes. But most require consent from others, from Russia to the Senate in Washington, DC.

Mr Obama repeated in Berlin an offer already made in private to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin: to reduce both sides’ deployed strategic nuclear weapons beyond cuts agreed in the 2010 New START Treaty. America could live with an arsenal reduced by up to a third, Mr Obama suggested. That would leave each country with just over 1,000 such weapons, if Mr Putin reciprocated.

Mr Obama talked of rejecting “the nuclear weaponisation that North Korea and Iran may be seeking”: a cautious form of words that avoided early confrontation with Iran’s president-elect, the avowed moderate Hassan Rohani. Mr Obama vowed to seek support for American ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (a long shot) and called for a global treaty banning the production of nuclear bomb-making materials (a hopeless task).

Obstacles loom. On the day of Mr Obama’s Berlin speech, Mr Putin grumbled about American anti-missile shields and about new high-precision non-nuclear weapons that he said approached the strike capability of strategic nuclear arms. In essence, Mr Putin thinks American talk of nuclear disarmament is “a plot to take over the world with conventional weapons”, says George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank.

Senate Republicans attack Mr Obama from the opposite direction. Bob Corker of Tennessee says that trimming America’s arsenal without modernising existing weapons could amount to “unilateral disarmament”, adding that he has been promised by the secretary of state, John Kerry, that further nuclear reductions would involve treaty talks with Russia, thus requiring Senate consent.

Legally, Mr Obama could agree cuts with Mr Putin, bypassing the Senate. But that is politically risky. Mr Obama wants disarmament as a legacy, so he is trying to rally global opinion to the cause. To date he looks unhappily alone.

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21579830-president-wants-scrap-nuclear-weapons-other-powers-do-not-obamas-lonely-quest

Then fuggedaboudit.

Perhaps you remember a few years back when Obama talked about reducing nuclear weapons much in the same way Reagan talked about it, but Obama was attacked by the Right.

The "right" aren't president.
As for Putin, he should worry about China rather than the US if nukes disappear.

The Right do have influence in our government right now.