US President Barack Obama paid homage to the heroes of D-Day on Saturday, saying their assault on Normandy's beaches exactly 65 years ago had helped save the world from evil and tyranny. Addressing stooped, white-haired veterans, Obama said the Second World War represented a special moment in history when nations fought together to battle a murderous ideology.
"We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about what is true," Obama said. "In such a world, it is rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to something universal about humanity. The Second World War did that." His visit to Normandy came at the end of a rapid tour through Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Germany and France, where Obama has tried to reach out to the Muslim world and press for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Speaking in a giant US military cemetery at Colleville, where 9,387 American soldiers lie, Obama said the war against Nazi Germany laid the way for years of peace and prosperity. "It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the twentieth century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide," he said. The Colleville cemetery, with its rows of white crosses and stars of David, overlooks the Omaha Beach landing where US forces on June 6, 1944, suffered their greatest casualties in the assault against heavily fortified German defences.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper joined Obama at Saturday's ceremony held under bright skies - a stark contrast to the winds and rain that marked D-Day. Obama has been seeking to repair ties with France and other European states who were alienated by his predecessor George W. Bush's go-it-alone diplomacy, the US-led invasion of Iraq and his policies on climate change.
Earlier on Saturday he held talks with Sarkozy, where the two said they were determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Obama also promised an uncompromising stance against North Korea, which tested a nuclear bomb last month. In his speech, Obama said D-Day showed that human destiny was not determined by forces beyond its control but by individual choices and joint action.
On a more personal note, he also saluted his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who arrived in Normandy a month after D-Day, and also his great uncle, Charles Payne, who was in the first American division during the war and was present on Saturday. "No man who shed blood or lost a brother would say that war is good. But all know that this war was essential," he said. Earlier, US President Barack Obama said 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.
Obama highlighted the separate policies being pursued against the two, with the United States seeking an increasingly tough line on Stalinist North Korea while it has offered to hold talks Iran's hard-line Islamic government.
Iran's nuclear programme featured 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 the nuclear threat from the two states at a press conference after the talks in the northern French city of Caen.
"North Korea's actions over the last couple of months have been extraordinarily provocative," he said. "They have made no bones about the fact that they are testing nuclear weapons, testing missiles that would potentially have intercontinental capacity. And, in fact, we are not intending to continue a policy of rewarding provocation," he added.
Obama said the UN Security Council is working toward a new resolution on North Korea and he insisted that even China and Russia, the two major powers closest to the North, were taking a tougher approach. "They understand how destabilising North Korea's actions are."
"We are going to take a very hard look at how we move forward," said the US leader. "I don't think there will be an assumption that we will simply continue down the path in which North Korea is constantly destabilising the region" and can expect a "reward" in return.
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." He stressed though that the United States was not taking the same attitude as toward North Korea.
"We are breaking significantly from past approaches. We are willing to have direct negotiations with the Iranians on a whole range of issues without preconditions in an atmosphere of mutual respect and resolve," he said. "Like President Sarkozy, my view is that Iran in possession of a nuclear weapon would be profoundly dangerous not just for the United States, not just with Israel, but to the entire region and in time to the entire world."
Iran has not yet given a clear response to the US offer, but its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday, as Obama was giving a landmark speech on the Muslim world, that "the nations in the region hate the United States from the bottom of their hearts."
On the same day President Ahmadinejad, who is seeking a second term in office in an election on June 12, reaffirmed his bitter anti-Israel stance and called the Holocaust a "big deception". Sarkozy, who met Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki 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," said Sarkozy. "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."
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