Have patience; things are moving in right direction: Obama

Claiming that things are moving in right direction, US president Barack Obama on Wednesday said it will take some time before the results of his decisions start showing up and asked the people to have patience.

"Leaders from the two sides in Northern Ireland that, you know, a couple of decades ago or even a decade ago people would have said could never achieve peace. And here they were, jointly appearing and talking about their commitment, even in the face of violent provocation," Obama said at a press conference.

"What that tells me is that if you stick to it, if you are persistent, then these problems can be dealt with," he said in response to a question.

"That whole philosophy of persistence, by the way, is one that I'm going to be emphasizing again and again in the months and years to come, as long as I am in this office. I'm a big believer in persistence," he said.

"I think that when it comes to domestic affairs, if we keep on working at it, if we acknowledge that we make mistakes sometimes and that we don't always have the right answer, and we're inheriting very knotty problems, that we can pass  health care, we can find better solutions to our energy challenges, we can teach our children more effectively, we can deal with a very real budget crisis that is not fully dealt with in my budget at this point, but makes progress," Obama said.

"I think when it comes to the banking system, you know, it was just a few days ago or weeks ago where people were certain that Secretary (Timothy) Geithner couldn't deliver a plan. Today, the headlines all look like, well, all right, there's a plan," he said.

Obama said he is sure there'll be more criticism and we'll have to make more adjustments, but we're moving in the right direction."

Referring to his video message to the people and leaders of Iran on their new year's say, Obama recalled, "Some people said, "Well, they did not immediately say they were eliminating nuclear weapons and stop funding terrorism." Well, we didn't expect that. We expect that we're going to make steady progress on this front."

"We haven't immediately eliminated the influence of lobbyists in Washington. We have not immediately eliminated wasteful pork projects. And we're not immediately going to get Middle East peace. We've been in office now a little over 60 days," Obama said.

"We are going to stay with it as long as I'm in this office. I think that you look back four years from now, I think, hopefully, people will judge that body of work and say: This is big ocean liner; it's not a speedboat. It doesn't turn around immediately, but we're in a better, better place because of the decisions that we made," Obama asserted.