New Delhi: The US has made significant progress in negotiations with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but President Donald Trump is maintaining a cautious approach and will not accept a bad deal, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday.
The remarks by the US Secretary of State, currently on a four-day trip to India, came amid indications that the US and Iran are looking at a preliminary deal to reopen the shipping lane before hammering out a comprehensive peace agreement.
"Work is still in progress. We thought we might have some news last night, maybe today," he told a small group of reporters before leaving for Agra.
"So we have what I think is a pretty solid thing on the table in terms of get the Strait open, enter into a very real, significant time-limited negotiation on the nuclear matters and hopefully we can pull it off," Rubio said
The US Secretary of State said there has been global support for the ongoing efforts to end the conflict in West Asia, but added that the road to peace is not very easy.
The key sticking points in the US-Iran peace talks have been Iran's nuclear programme and control over the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world's energy supplies pass in normal times.
Shipping through the Strait has been severely disrupted since February 28, when the US and Israel launched joint attacks on Iran, triggering retaliatory strikes. Shipping disruptions continue even though a fragile ceasefire has been in place since April 8.
"Every country that we've walked through understands it's not just very reasonable, but it's the right thing for the world to get done. As the President said, he's not in a hurry; he's not going to make a bad deal," he said.
Rubio said the US is going to give diplomacy "every chance to succeed" before exploring "alternatives".
"The President is not going to make a bad deal. No one has been more serious about the threat of a nuclear Iran than President Trump has been."
"And so I'm very confident that we should all be very confident that we're either going to have a good agreement or we're going to have to deal with it another way," he said.
"We'd prefer to have a good agreement," he said.
Rubio, addressing a press conference after holding wide-ranging talks with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, said on Sunday that there is a possibility of "good news" coming in the next few hours.
The US Secretary of State also responded to a question on Lebanon.
"We're working on it separately. With Lebanon, we are engaged as we have a 45-day ceasefire. We've had weekly meetings now and ongoing daily engagements between the government of Lebanon and Israel," he said.
Rubio said the "problem" is not Lebanon and Israel, but Hezbollah.
"Just last night, Hezbollah put out a statement calling for the overthrow of the Lebanese government. And it just reminds you of who you are dealing with here. It (Hezbollah) is a 100 per cent Iranian proxy.
"As long as an armed Hezbollah exists, it's going to be hard to achieve peace in Lebanon because they're victimising the people of Lebanon," Rubio said.
We are working on that track with the Lebanese government and the Israeli government, and we've made some good progress there, he said.
"We're going to continue to work on that. Well, Israel always has the right to protect itself. Every country in the world does. And so if Hezbollah is going to launch missiles or launch missiles at them, Israel has every right to respond to that or to prevent that from happening," Rubio said.
The US Secretary of State said he was looking forward to his visit to the Taj Mahal.
"It's one of the wonders of the world. I think it's important to show respect to the culture of the countries that you visit," he said.
Rubio will also travel to Jaipur before returning to New Delhi on Tuesday morning to attend a meeting of Quad foreign ministers.
"We have a gap in our schedule because the Quad meeting couldn't happen until tomorrow. So it was a good opportunity to see some of the cultural sites here and pay respect to this country," he said.
"There's so much to see here, and such a big country with a lot of diversity and a tremendous history. So it'll be a good opportunity to see something that is iconic for the country," Rubio said.
(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
