By Xinhua
Washington : The United States has not changed its policy toward Iran although its envoy was found sitting together with the Iranian foreign minister at an international panel, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Wednesday.
Referring to reports that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad sat beside Iranian Foreign Minister at a panel of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Saturday, McCormack said that Khalilzad’s behavior was not authorized.
“Is there some new policy, … was permission asked for in advance? No, it’s not a new policy. There wasn’t any permission in advance,” McCormack said, noting that a similar case would not be repeated unless Iran reverses course on its disputed nuclear program.
“You can judge by the fact we haven’t done these sorts of things in the past, and I don’t expect that we will, absent some agreement from the Iranians that they are going to suspend their uranium enrichment processing and reprocessing related activities,” he said.
On future possible contact between the United States and Iran, the spokesman said that the U.S. government communicates with the Iranians through the Swiss Embassy and American ambassador Ryan Crocker in Baghdad.
“And there is a potential secretary of state channel should they chose to suspend their enrichment,” he added.
The White House has expressed anger about an appearance in which Khalilzad sat together, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
Khalilzad’s spokesman, Richard A. Grenell, characterized Khalilzad’s appearance beside Mottaki as “just a multilateral conversation with the moderator.”
“There was no separate meeting or separate conversation or handshake with the Iranian foreign minister,” Grenell was quoted as reporting.
But White House officials were angry about the episode, the report quoted unidentified officials as saying.
In addition, the leading U.S. newspaper said that many State Department officials say privately that they think the administration should directly engage Iran, and without preconditions, a view that is not shared by the White House.
The United States has no diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980, and the Bush administration has limited its official high-level dealings with Iran to discussions about Iraq, primarily in Baghdad.