Iran keeps door open to nuclear talks

Speaking to the ideological faithful at the gilt shrine dedicated to Iran's top revolutionary icon, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the weekend softened Iran's stance toward nuclear talks with the West and the United States, saying a deal may be possible.

The arch-conservative Iranian president spoke after receiving a call from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who urged Mr. Ahmadinejad not to dismiss unseen incentives from Western powers to limit his country's nuclear programs.

The proposal with those incentives - and a host of likely penalties if Iran resists - is to be hand-delivered to Tehran this week.

In a major policy shift, the US has said it will join European talks with Iran if the Islamic Republic resuspends uranium enrichment, which was restarted last August after a two-year hiatus during negotiations with Britain, France, and Germany. It would be the first such public contact by the US after more than a quarter-century of hostility.

Ahmadinejad also appears to be keeping the door open for a deal. "We won't make any prejudgment about the proposal to be presented to us.... We won't be in haste to judge it," Ahmadinejad told Iranians gathered to mark the 17th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Khomeini. "We are after negotiations, but fair and just negotiations. They must be without any preconditions."

But Ahmadinejad's comments were tempered by a tough warning from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said that a "wrong move" by the US - such as a military strike - could disrupt energy supplies from the Gulf region.

Both the US and Iran have long battered each other with uncompromising rhetoric. But a series of recent signals by clerical leaders that Tehran is ready to talk is coinciding with a growing realization in Washington that military options and "regime change" are risky and that no solution to the standoff is possible without direct US engagement.

"[Iranian officials] are looking for a kind of face-saving," says Davoud Hermidas Bavand, a professor of international law at Alameh University in Tehran. "They think they should not be portrayed as defeated."

State TV reported that Ahmadinejad told Mr. Annan that Iran would not bow to "threats," or give up its "absolute rights," as codified in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to enrich uranium for energy production.

Outlining the new US position on direct talks last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged Iran's right to nuclear power. Under dispute is Iran's strategic aim: Tehran insists it only wants atomic energy; the US and some Western nations claim Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons.

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