Tehran: Senior Iranian leader and parliament speaker Ali Larijani has said he believes US president-elect Barack Obama would bring "strategic change" in Washington's Iran policy.

Larijani told a seminar: "Obama must acknowledge that change does not mean a change of colour or superficial development but involves new approach in policy", official IRNA news agency Sunday quoted him as saying.

Obama must send the correct signal to the region to rebuild relationship, the Iranian leader said.

Referring to the US president-elect's recent remarks on Iran's nuclear programme, he said it represented the "same erroneous line of thinking of the past".

At his first press conference since winning the US presidential election, Obama had accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons and lending support to terrorist organizations.

"Iran's development of a nuclear weapon I believe is unacceptable. We have to mount an international effort to prevent that from happening," Obama claimed. "Iran's support of terrorist organizations, I think, is something that has to cease."

"Obama's words were tantamount to moving on the previous wrong track," Larijani said.

"It is necessary (for the US) to make a strategic change in policies. But this change will not be made easily because there are many decision-making centres in the country," he warned.

Obama ran his campaign under the slogan of 'change', and his landslide victory has fuelled hopes across the world for a new approach to US foreign policy.

 

Source : IANS