Obama: US would walk away from talks with Iran

Barack Obama says the US would “walk away” from nuclear talks with Iran if there’s no acceptable deal.

The US president says any agreement must allow Western powers to verify Tehran isn’t going to obtain an atomic weapon, and that even if Iran “cheated,” the US and others would have “enough time to take action”.

Obama told CBS’ Sunday Morning that “if we don’t have that kind of deal, then we’re not going to take it”.

Big gaps remain to bridge if the sides are to reach a deal by the end of March deadline set by negotiators. The next round of talks is set to begin March 15. Iran says that the programme is peaceful and exists only to produce energy for civilian use.

Meanwhile, clasping hands with “one of my heroes,” Congressman John Lewis, and Amelia Boynton Robinson, who was badly beaten on Bloody Sunday, Obama led several dozen people across the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge under Alabama’s bright sun.

The Pettus Bridge was the site of the conflict on Sunday, March 7, 1965, when armed officers attacked peaceful civil rights demonstrators attempting to march to the state capital of Montgomery.

Malia and Sasha, Obama’s daughters, marched along with the lady, Michelle, her mother, Marian Robinson, and former President George W Bush and his wife, Laura.

Lewis, an original Bloody Sunday participant, held court when Saturday’s group stopped just after passing beneath the bridge awning bearing the name of Pettus, a brigadier general in the Confederate army.