booking entertainment: President Rouhani: Iran wants to reboot foreign policy

Monday, August 19, 2013

President Rouhani: Iran wants to reboot foreign policy

By The Associated Press

Published: Saturday, August 17, 2013, 8:57?p.m.
Updated 2 hours ago

TEHRAN ? Iran's new president said on Saturday that his countrymen elected him to change the country's foreign policy and shift away from the bombastic style adopted under his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Hasan Rouhani said his government will adjust its tactics to reach out to world powers. But he said the Islamic Republic will retain its principles.

?We don't have the right to use foreign policy to chant slogans or clap,? Rouhani said.

?Foreign policy is not where one can speak or take a position without paying attention,? he said during the inauguration of Iran's new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

?People in the June 14 elections declared that they want a new foreign policy,? the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Rouhani has pledged to follow a policy of moderation and ease tensions with the outside world. He has also vowed to improve an economy ravaged by international sanctions and mismanagement by empowering technocrats.

He won a landslide victory in June 14 presidential elections, defeating his conservative rivals. Rouhani took the oath of office on Aug. 4 and parliament approved all but three of his proposed ministers Thursday.

The core of Rouhani's team includes figures whose academic pedigrees run through places such as California, Washington, Paris and London.

Show commenting policy

TribLive commenting policy

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments ? either by the same reader or different readers.

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.