Rice open to direct talks with Iran
Speaking at a press conference on April 5, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Rice has not ruled out bilateral talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki on the sidelines of an international conference on Iraq early next month.
The Iraqi government says the meeting will take place at an as-yet undisclosed location and involve the country’s neighbors as well as world powers.
McCormack also reiterated the U.S. position that in terms of discussing Iran's nuclear program, Washington would only meet with Tehran if it suspended its sensitive enrichment work.
Last month in Baghdad, during a meeting of Iraq’s neighbors, then-U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad had brief encounters with both Iranian and Syrian delegates. And this week, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus in talks criticized by U.S. President George W. Bush.
Current European Union president Germany also said it hopes that Iran’s release of the Britons would improve dialogue with Iran over its nuclear program. But U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday, said he sees no link between Iran’s release of the Britons and any possibility of future direct talks between Tehran and Washington:
"I don't think there is any connection between (President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's) action to release the British soldiers and what might or might not happen between the United States and Iran in the future in terms of talks or anything else for that matter," Gates said.