Changing tone, U.S. offers Iran direct talks
Susan Rice, new envoy to the U.N., also has a warning for Tehran on its nuclear ambitions.
UNITED NATIONS - President Obama's administration will engage in "direct diplomacy" with Iran, the newly installed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said yesterday.
After the 1979 Iranian revolution, U.S. officials have had narrowly focused direct contacts with Iran but are not known to have had any wide-ranging contacts.
But U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice warned that Iran must meet Security Council demands to suspend uranium enrichment before any talks on its nuclear program.
"The dialogue and diplomacy must go hand in hand with a very firm message from the United States and the international community that Iran needs to meet its obligations as defined by the Security Council," Rice told reporters. "And its continuing refusal to do so will only cause pressure to increase."
Her comments, reflecting Obama's signals for improved relations with America's foes after eight years under President George W. Bush, came shortly after meeting with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on her first day in her new job.
Iran still considers the United States the "Great Satan," but a day after Obama was sworn in, it said it was "ready for new approaches by the United States." Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said his country would study allowing Washington to open a diplomatic office in Tehran, the first since 1979.
In recent years, Iranian and U.S. officials have negotiated in the same room about Afghanistan that involved other countries' diplomats. They also have talked face-to-face in Baghdad, but the agenda was limited to Iraqi security.
The differences between Washington and Tehran run deep. They include U.S. suspicions about Iran's nuclear program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threats to annihilate Israel, and Tehran's support for Hamas.
Rice met with Ban in the morning to present her credentials. She said they spent 45 minutes discussing climate change, poverty reduction, U.N. peacekeeping, nonproliferation, Sudan and the Middle East.
NATO's secretary-general, Japp de Hoop Scheffer, also said yesterday that NATO must engage with Iran to secure regional support for the war in neighboring Afghanistan.
In a move that could complicate overtures to Iran, the European Union decided yesterday to remove an Iranian opposition group from the EU's terror list and lift the restrictions on its funds.
Iran condemned the decision as evidence of "double standards" on terrorism, and France appealed it.
The decision by the 27-nation bloc's foreign ministers means that as of today, the assets of the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran will be unfrozen. It is the first time an organization has been "delisted" by the EU.
The People's Mujahedeen remains on the U.S. terror list.
It was blacklisted by the EU in 2002, but several European Union court decisions went in the group's favor.