Tough talk on Iran's nuclear program has raised the specter of a possible US attack, but tensions between the two diplomatic foes nevertheless appear to have eased on the issue of securing Iraq.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Tuesday that Iran had accepted an invitation by Washington for a fourth round of bilateral talks on curbing bloodshed in Iran's violence-wracked western neighbor.
"Iran has agreed with this request within the framework of its policy of helping the Iraqi people," Mottaki told reporters.
"The exact date of the fourth round of the talks will be announced in the near future" in Iraq, he said.
He said that Washington had requested the new talks through the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which looks after US interests in Iran in the absence of a US mission.
The US broke off diplomatic ties with Iran in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed the talks were planned but did not specify a date.
"We have communicated to the Iranian Government that we are agreeable to that. We have not yet received back a reply," he told reporters on Tuesday.
"We are open to using this channel as a way of talking directly about important issues concerning security in Iraq. We don't yet have a date," he said.
A major source of diplomatic tension between Washington and Tehran is Iran's nuclear program. The US has stepped up sanctions on Tehran to punish it for what it believes is a drive to make nuclear arms.
Iran insists its uranium enrichment activities are aimed at generating power for civilian use.
US President George W. Bush last month raised the prospect of a "World War III" if Iran acquires the knowledge to build nuclear weapons.
Vice President Dick Cheney later warned of "serious consequences" if Iran continues to enrich uranium.
Such rhetoric is not expected to feature in the next Iraq talks, however.
The US has accused Iran of arming Shiite insurgents who have killed US troops in Iraq, but progress on this front has been reported in recent weeks.
US General James Simmons, a deputy corps commander in Iraq, said on Nov. 15 that Iran appeared to be holding to its pledge to stem the flow of arms into Iraq, contributing to a sharp fall in roadside bomb attacks there in recent months.
He said that there was no evidence that the flow of weapons across the border form Iran was continuing.
"We believe that this indicates the commitments Iran has made appear to be holding up," the general said.
In another possible sign of diplomatic detente over Iraq, nine Iranians held there on suspicion of aiding insurgents were freed by the US military this month, including two members of Iran's elite al-Quds force.
A senior Iraqi Shiite leader, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, later said he had information from US officials that more Iranians would soon be released. Iran also opened two consulates in the main Iraqi Kurdish towns of Erbil and Sulaimaniyah.
In another significant diplomatic move, meanwhile, Washington shelved a controversial US$75 million funding package for Iranian political groups opposed to the regime in Tehran.
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
EYEING A SOLUTION: In unusually critical remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said he was ‘destroying Russia by not making a deal’ US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war. Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term. “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other
In Earth’s upper atmosphere, a fast-moving band of air called the jet stream blows with winds of more than 442kph, but they are not the strongest in our solar system. The comparable high-altitude winds on Neptune reach about 2,000kph. However, those are a mere breeze compared with the jet stream on a planet called WASP-127b. Astronomers have detected winds howling at about 33,000kph on the large gaseous planet in our Milky Way galaxy approximately 520 light-years from Earth in a tight orbit around a star similar to our sun. The supersonic jet-stream winds circling WASP-127b at its equator are the fastest of their kind
RSS