By IRNA,
New York : The United States is willing to hold face-to-face talks with Iran over the nuclear program, the State Department said.
“If Iran accepts, we hope this will be an occasion to seriously engage Iran of how to break the logjam of recent years and work in a cooperative manner to resolve the outstanding international concerns about its nuclear program,” State Department spokesman Robert Wood said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, briefly addressing the administration’s decision Wednesday, told reporters that “pursuing very careful engagement on a range of issues that affect our interests and the interests of the world with Iran makes sense.”
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that those who have nuclear bombs are backward nations, because the time for threats is over.
In a statement carried by IRNA, Ahmadinejad said Iran was “ready to cooperate” toward nuclear disarmament, as long as those efforts did not create obstacles for countries that wish to produce nuclear fuel for civilian power.