Washington, Sep 12
With the Republican
controlled US Congress failing to scuttle the landmark Iran nuclear
deal, the US said it was up to India how to work its way through the
accord which "is truly an international architecture."
"Each
nation has, obviously, sovereign rights to impose sanctions on their
own," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters Friday when
asked how long the sanctions regime that obliged India to cut down its
oil imports would continue.
"The unilateral US sanctions against
Iran's nefarious activities will remain in place, and we'll continually
review those as we go forward," he said.
"It wouldn't be
appropriate for us to tell India how to work their way through this, but
we do believe that the architecture of the Iran deal is truly an
international architecture," Kirby said.
"This was many countries
coming together to try to make sure that Iran never possess a nuclear
weapon, and the deal does that," he said.
"The sanctions that
we're talking about as part of the Iran deal are UN sanctions that were
always meant to drive Iran to the negotiating table. So they worked in
that regard," Kirby said.
There's no new sanctions relief under
the agreement until "Iran has completed the necessary steps that it
needs to complete with the IAEA to verify the status of their nuclear
programme and that it's peaceful," he said.
The US was "grateful
for what's happened this week in Congress," Kirby said. "It looks like
it's going to be moving forward, and pretty soon ... we'll have to turn
our task to implementation."
Kirby said he didn't know of any
request that was made by the US to ask India to cut its oil from Iran.
"I'll have to check on that."
Meanwhile, a day after the Senate
secured the Iran nuclear deal, blocking a Republican resolution to
scuttle it, the House pressed forward with a pair of symbolic votes
designed to show a majority of the chamber disapproves of the agreement.
A
bill approving of the nuclear deal was resoundingly defeated, with 25
Democrats joining House Republicans in expressing opposition to the
pact.
On a second vote largely along party lines, the House
passed a non- binding legislation stating that the President could not
unilaterally lift statutory sanctions.
The vote was 247 to 186, with two Democrats voting with Republicans.
The fresh House votes can't prevent the administration from starting to implement the agreement later this month.
President
Barack Obama released a statement after the House votes stressing that
the vast majority of House Democrats went on record supporting the deal.
Obama
said he was gratified that the lawmakers who "have taken care to judge
the deal on the merits are joining our allies and partners around the
world in taking steps that will allow for the implementation of this
long-term, comprehensive deal."
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
