Obama warns Iran and North Korea over nuclear threat

(SMH) -US President Barack Obama said on Saturday that North Korea's nuclear weapon test had been "extraordinarily provocative" and that it would be "profoundly dangerous" for Iran to get a nuclear bomb.

Iran's nuclear program featured strongly in talks between Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy who condemned what he called "senseless" new remarks by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad casting doubt on the Holocaust.

Obama was asked about general nuclear proliferation threats at a brief press conference afterwards.

"North Korea's actions over the last several months have been extraordinarily provocative," he said.

"They have made no bones about the fact that they are testing nuclear weapons."

Obama said the UN Security Council was working towards a new resolution on North Korea and he insisted that the international community would take a "very hard look" at how to deal with the isolated Stalinist state.

Obama added that letting Iran develop a nuclear bomb would be "profoundly dangerous" and would lead other Middle East states to say "we have to go for it as well".

Sarkozy, who met Iran's foreign minister on Wednesday, said, "I told him first of all that they have to take President Obama's outstretched hand.

"Iran has the right to civilian nuclear power but not a military nuclear capability. And they must understand that.

"If their aims are peaceful they should accept international inspections, but we can't accept the Iranian leader making senseless declarations.

"The United States and France are entirely together on this question. Iran is a great country, a great civilisation. We want peace, we want dialogue, we want to help them develop, but we do not want nuclear proliferation. We are united on this."

Ahmadinejad, who is seeking a second term in office in an election this month, on Wednesday reaffirmed his bitter anti-Israel stance and called the Holocaust a "big deception".

He also accused the world's liberal democracies of degrading "human values" with their pro-Israel policies.

Sarkozy told Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Wednesday that such comments were "unacceptable and profoundly shocking," his office said.