America
Congress can't modify Iran n-deal: Kerry
Washington, March 12
US Secretary of State
John Kerry on Wednesday refuted the claim by a group of Republican
senators in a letter that an agreement on Iran's nuclear programme not
approved by the Congress would lapse.
Kerry said that the
Congress could not modify the terms of a potential nuclear agreement
between the world powers and Iran, according to a Xinhua report.
"It's
incorrect when it (the senators' letter) says that Congress could
actually modify the terms of an agreement at any time. That's flat
wrong," Kerry told lawmakers. "They don't have the right to modify an
agreement reached, executive-to-executive, between leaders of a
country."
Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that
the US was not negotiating a "legally binding plan", but one that has "a
capacity for enforcement".
Almost 50 Republican senators warned
Iran in a letter made public on Monday that an agreement on its nuclear
programme that is not approved by the US Congress could lapse as soon as
President Barack Obama left the White House in less than two years.
"We
will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear weapons programme
that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive
agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei," said the
senators in the missive.
"The next president could revoke such an
executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses
could modify the terms of the agreement at any time," the letter read.
The
rare move of Congressional intervention on US foreign policy drew
criticism from the White House, with Vice President Joe Biden dismissing
it as "a dangerous mistake to scuttle a peaceful resolution" of the
Iranian nuclear issue.
The negotiations between Iran and the P5+1
group of world powers, consisting of Britain, France, China, Russia and
Germany, over Iran's nuclear programme hope to reach a framework deal
by the end of March.
The deal would likely oblige Iran to cut
back its nuclear programme, reportedly for at least 10 years, in
exchange for a loosening of crippling economic sanctions. A
comprehensive pact was to be achieved by the end of June.
On
Wednesday, Kerry said that his reaction to the letter was one of "utter
disbelief", adding that it "ignores more than two centuries of precedent
in the conduct of American foreign policy".
The US secretary of
state said in a reference to the letter by the Republican senators that
he had never heard of anything like this during his 29 years in the
Senate
He also warned that the Republicans' move could harm global trust in the US.
"This risks undermining the confidence that foreign governments, in thousands of important agreements, commit to...†he said.
Many
members of the US Congress are concerned, however, that the Obama
administration will agree to a deal that is not strict enough, or that
simply delays Iran's ability to get a nuclear weapon.
Iran has dismissed the warning by the US Republican senators' letter as having "no legal value" and "mostly a propaganda ploy".