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Obama to Congress: Not time to pass additional legislation on Iran

Other News Materials 1 March 2015 02:56 (UTC +04:00)
US President Barack Obama has threatened to veto legislation that would allow Congress to review of any agreement with Iran over its nuclear enrichment program.
Obama to Congress: Not time to pass additional legislation on Iran

US President Barack Obama has threatened to veto legislation that would allow Congress to review of any agreement with Iran over its nuclear enrichment program, Press TV reported.

"The President has been clear that now is not the time for Congress to pass additional legislation on Iran," US National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan told the Washington-based newspaper The Hill on Saturday.

"If this bill is sent to the President, he will veto it. We are in the final weeks of an international negotiation. We should give our negotiators the best chance of success, rather than complicating their efforts," she added.

The White House comments came hours after some hawkish senators introduced a bill requiring Obama to submit the text of any deal to Congress. The legislation would also ban the White House from lifting any sanctions for a period of 60 days so that Congress could hold hearings and debate the deal.

The measure dubbed the "Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015" was introduced on Friday by Senators Bob Corker, Robert Menendez, Lindsey Graham and Tim Kaine.

Senators John McCain, Joe Donnelly, Marco Rubio, Heidi Heitkamp, Kelly Ayotte, Bill Nelson, Jim Risch, and Angus King co-sponsored the bill.

It is not yet known when the bill would come to a vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The legislation is seen as a challenge to Obama's authority over a possible nuclear agreement with Tehran.

Nuclear talks between representatives from Iran and the United States started on February 22 in the Swiss city of Geneva and the two sides held three rounds of talks in two days in an attempt to narrow differences ahead of a key July 1 deadline for reaching a comprehensive deal.

The scale of Iran's uranium enrichment and the timetable for the lifting of anti-Iran sanctions are seen as major sticking points in the talks.

Both the Iranian and US diplomats said some progress was made toward a final agreement.

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