WASHINGTON  - President Barack Obama ordered a secret wave of sophisticated computer attacks on Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities, The New York Times reported Friday.Obama decided to accelerate the programme, begun under the Bush administration and code-named "Olympic Games," even after the some of the code of computer worm used in the cyber attacks was revealed on the Internet, the newspaper said."Olympic Games" was a joint venture between the U.S. and Israel designed to take down the Iranian nuclear programme using the worm dubbed Stuxnet, according to the Times.The decision to reveal Obama's role in the cyberwar against Iran follows hard on the heels of the highly political disclosure in an election year that the president had taken a personal role in approving terrorist targets for US drone strikes.And the depiction of his key involvement in two major clandestine military operations follows photographs last year showing him, as commander-in-chief, awaiting news of the death of Osama bin Laden.The revelations on Iran appear designed to neutralise Republican accusations that he has been weak over the issue of Iran's nuclear programme.According to the New York Times, Obama took the decision to accelerate the pace of computer sabotage against Tehran in 2010 even after details about one of the cyber weapons developed to attack Iran, the so-called Stuxnet worm, accidentally leaked on to the internet because of a programming error.That worm had been designed to target Iran's Natanz plant.At a meeting in the White House situation room within days of the worm's "escape", Obama asked his advisers, including Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA, whether the effort should be wound up because it had been compromised.According to sources in the room at the time, Obama asked: "Should we shut this thing down?" before deciding instead to push ahead with the attacks. The Natanz plant was hit twice more by versions of the worm, which damaged up to 1,000 high-speed centrifuges then enriching uranium.Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on Friday expressed "high hopes" that a new round of nuclear talks in Moscow this month will succeed if world powers come with a "positive" approach.Speaking during a visit to New Delhi, the foreign minister acknowledged that Iran and the P5+1 group will face "difficult negotiations" at the June 18-19 talks in Moscow, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported.But Salehi said the Islamic republic remains optimistic saying the "direction" of the talks so far has been good."In any case it is difficult negotiations and both parties should act and accelerate this process in a way so this case bears fruit as soon as possible satisfying both parties," Salehi told IRNA in New Delhi."The direction (of the talks) is correct and given this we have high hopes on the negotiations success," he added.Iran and the P5+1, which comprise the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, have previously met in April in Istanbul and again in May in Baghdad."We hope that in the Moscow meeting the other party enters the talks with a positive approach," Salehi said.At the May 23-24 talks in Baghdad the negotiations exposed a gulf between the two sides' positions that looked almost unbridgeable, and nearly caused the talks to collapse.The priority issue for the P5+1 going into the Moscow round is convincing Iran to give up enriching uranium to 20 percent purity and hand over its 20-percent stock in a fuel-swap deal.Uranium enriched to 20 percent is just a few technical steps short of bomb-grade 90 percent uranium. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday told France 24 television that his country viewed 20 percent enrichment as "one of our rights in terms of international law."He hinted that Iran might still negotiate on that issue, but only if the P5+1 greatly sweetened its offer.Salehi, who was Iran's atomic programme chief, reiterated the Islamic republic's position that Tehran scrupulously adheres to the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty supervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency."We (Iran) are exerting all our efforts so the NPT can act as prevention of non-peaceful nuclear activities in the world and we consider in the interest of the Islamic republic and we are emphasising on it," Salehi said.