Iran ready to consider negotiations with US

TEHRAN—Iran said on Monday it was ready to consider any official U.S. request to hold talks after U.S. allies called on Washington to engage the Islamic Republic. British Prime Minister Tony Blair will on Monday call for Syria and Iran to be engaged in efforts to stem violence in Iraq and help secure Middle East peace. Australian Prime Minister John Howard, another U.S. ally, backed the British proposal.
“If they (the United States) really want to hold talks with Iran, they should officially propose it and then Iran will review it,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told Reuters. President Bush is due on Monday to meet a bipartisan panel that is exploring alternative strategies on Iraq. Engaging with Syria and Iran on Iraq is an idea favored by some members of the panel, which is co-chaired by former U.S. secretary of state James Baker.
The idea has previously been rejected by Bush. Washington accuses Iran of aiding the insurgency and stoking sectarian strife in Iraq, a charge Tehran denies. Iranian government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham earlier said the Islamic republic would welcome any change in U.S. policy, but he did not directly address the issue of talks.
“If there is a 180-degree turn in the policies of America it would be a blessed event,” Elham told a weekly news conference on Monday. “We hope that America reconsiders its policies, leaves the region alone, ... abandons war-mongering and supporting terrorist groups in this region,” Elham said. Tehran, which had no ties with Washington since shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution, often calls for the United States to change its behavior in the region.
Talks between Iran and the United States on Iraq seemed possible in March, but the idea was shot down a month later by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said such negotiations were not needed.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last month signaled that Washington might join talks with Tehran to resolve the Iran nuclear issue, but only if the Islamic Republic first suspended uranium enrichment, something Iran has repeatedly refused to do.
Prime Minister Tony Blair will call for the greater involvement of Syria and Iran in efforts to secure peace in Iraq and the Middle East during a keynote address in central London. According to his office, he will restate his conviction that engaging Damascus and Tehran is crucial to end the mounting sectarian conflict in Iraq and get the deadlocked peace process in the wider region back on track.
He will “make clear to Syria and Iran the basis on which they can help the peaceful development of the Middle East rather than hinder it; and the consequences of not doing so”, an aide said.
On Iraq, newspapers Monday reported that he will concede that Britain’s approach must “evolve” to meet the changing nature of the conflict, amid mounting violence, including against US and British troops.
Blair is facing calls for a debate on an exit strategy from Iraq. Scottish and Welsh nationalists have put forward an amendment to the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday, when Queen Elizabeth II officially opens parliament and sets out the government’s legislative agenda.
His speech at the annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet in the City financial district of central London will see him defend Britain’s controversial close alignment to the United States on foreign policy issues.—Agencies