WASHINGTON — With joblessness rising, President Barack Obama said Thursday he was ``deeply concerned'' about unemployment and conceded that too many families are worried about ``whether they will be next'' to suffer economically.
In a White House interview with The Associated Press, Obama said that since he took office, ``we have successfully stabilized the financial markets,'' and ``started to see some stabilization on housing.''
``But what we are still seeing is too many jobs lost,'' said Obama, commenting after new government figures showed the unemployment rate had risen to 9.5 percent last month.
On an important international subject, Obama is scheduled to travel to Russia next week, and he said the agenda includes talks on a new treaty to curtail long-range nuclear missiles. Asked why he intends to meet with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the former president, Obama said he ``still has a lot of sway.'' Putin now is nominally the second-in-command in the Kremlin.
Obama also is to meet with the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev.
It is important that both Medvedev and Putin hear the same message from the U.S., said Obama, who added that he believes Putin ``has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new.''
Obama praised Russia for its cooperation in attempting to persuade North Korea and Iran to abandon their nuclear development programs. The United Nations recently approved ``the most robust sanction regime that we've ever seen with respect to North Korea,'' he said.
Asked if he was resigned to Iran's possession of nuclear weapons, he said, ``I'm not reconciled with that, and I don't think the international community is reconciled with that.''
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