UNITED NATIONS: The US and Iranian leaders took their rivalry to the UN General Assembly Thursday after six world powers said they were seeking an "negotiated solution" to its nuclear standoff with Tehran.
US President Barack Obama and Iran’s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were to appear on the assembly podium a few hours apart on the first day of the 65th UN General Assembly after a flurry of diplomatic activity Wednesday.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her counterparts from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia detailed the latest diplomatic overtures to settle the dispute.
After a meeting on the sidelines of the General Assembly, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said it was "time for Iran to engage in real negotiation, in actual constructive dialogue, about its whole nuclear program."
Iran has signaled a new willingness to engage the international community over its nuclear program. But so far it has failed to meet the terms for talks, and its defiance triggered new UN Security Council sanctions in June.
"The unity of the (six) shows that Iran can’t simply walk away from this and refuse to talk about it. The world is not going to forget about this issue," Hague said.
In a statement, the six "reaffirmed our determination and commitment to seek an early negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue and focused our discussion on further practical steps to achieve it at an early date."
US officials said there were signs from the Iranians that they may be ready for a meeting in the fall.
A senior US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told reporters afterward that the six powers were ready for "such a process, we’re committed to a diplomatic resolution and it remains to be seen whether the Iranians are."
The statement, read out by EU foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton, said the six powers are "ready to engage with Iran" in the context of implementing a nuclear fuel swap deal agreed in Geneva in October last year.
It added that they looked forward to an "early meeting" with Iran and were prepared to discuss a "revised arrangement," apparently because Iran has enriched much more uranium in the past year.
Under the deal, Iran would ship most of its low-grade uranium to France and Russia so that it could be enriched further and returned to Iran to fuel a medical research reactor in Tehran.
The deal had been designed to buy time and build confidence while the world community presses Iran to meet its demand to halt uranium enrichment, a program western powers fear masks a drive for a nuclear bomb.
But the deal stalled as Iran sought to modify its terms.
In June, the UN Security Council then approved a fourth round of sanctions against the Islamic republic, which in turn said it would suspend talks until September.
The chief diplomats for the six powers had "committed themselves" to the full implementation of the new sanctions, the senior US official said.
In Moscow, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday signed a decree banning supplies of S-300 missiles and other arms to Iran, in line with the tougher military and financial sanctions adopted in June.
The United States, which spearheaded the drive for the sanctions, has long argued that Iran will only return to the negotiating table once it feels them bite.
Iran has denied US contentions that the Islamic republic is starting to feel the pinch.
The six powers renewed calls for Iran to comply with international demands to fully open up its nuclear facilities to inspection and halt uranium enrichment.
Ahmadinejad told CNN in an interview broadcast late Wednesday that Iran had "no interest" in a nuclear bomb.
It insisted that no other country was worried about Tehran’s intentions other than "the Zionist regime and some American authorities," using the regime reference to mean Israel.
"We are not seeking the bomb," Ahmadinejad said.
"Both the Zionist regime and the United States government should be disarmed," he added. "The threat to the world is the bombs that the US government and the Zionist regime have."
Meanwhile, Brazil, China, India and Russia plan to submit a non-binding resolution to the UN opposing unilateral sanctions that the United States, Japan, and other countries have taken in addition to the UN sanctions, according to Brazil’s foreign minister Celso Amorim.
