TEHRAN: Iran said on Sunday it has agreed to a request from the United States for talks on Iraq, just over a week after the two archfoes failed to have substantive contacts at a conference in Egypt. Iran has agreed to talk to the US side over Iraq, in Iraq, in order to relieve the pain of the Iraqi people, to support the government and to reinforce security in Iraq, foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said. The time and date of the talks and the ranking of the negotiating team will be made public this week, he said according to the state-run Irna agency. The Mehr news agency said the talks would take place in Baghdad. Hosseini said the talks would go ahead after the United States made an official request to Iran through the Swiss embassy in Tehran and also following mediation efforts by Iraqi officials, local media reported. The United States did not confirm fixed plans for talks but a spokeswoman traveling with US Vice President Dick Cheney on his latest tour of the Middle East said Washington was ready for such dialogue. Lea Anne McBride said the United States had shown willingness to have that conversation, limited to Iraq issues, at the ambassador level.
Hosseini s comments come just over a week after hopes were dashed that Iran and the United States would hold substantive contacts at the conference on Iraq s security in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. At that meeting, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki barely exchanged pleasantries with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice while a lower-level encounter on May 4 between high-ranking diplomats lasted just minutes. Attempts by the Egyptian hosts to bring Rice and Mottaki together over dinner were stymied when the Iranian minister walked out of the gathering in protest at a Ukranian violinist s revealing red dress. The United States cut ties in 1980 during the 444-day siege of the US embassy in Tehran by radical students and ties have remained frozen ever since. Its interests in Tehran are now looked after by the Swiss embassy. The two sides have frequently exchanged verbal blows over Iraq, with the US accusing Tehran of aiding Shiite militia groups and attacking US servicemen, charges vehemently denied by Tehran. Tensions have also intensified in recent months over the arrest by the United States of seven Iranians accused of being operatives of the Revolutionary Guards elite Qods Brigade intent on stirring trouble in Iraq. But Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari after the Sharm El-Sheikh conference predicted that Iran and the United States would have to acknowledge the importance of one another in Iraq. No matter how dismissive the Iranians are about talking to the Americans, the Americans are players here. And even if the Americans view the Iranians negatively they are here, they are players whether we want it or not, he said. But in a sign that almost three decades of enmity between the two counties remains intact, Cheney on Friday issued a stark warning to Iran from the deck of a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf. We ll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region, he said on the USS John C. Stennis as it cruised roughly 240 km from Iran. The United States accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons and wants it to stop enriching uranium. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and has every right to the full fuel cycle.
