Ahmadinejad says his nation is willing to forget past, start a new era
TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s president on Wednesday sent the clearest signal yet that the Islamic Republic wants warmer ties with the U.S., just one day after Washington spoke of new strategies to address the country’s disputed nuclear program.
Taken together, the developments indicate that the longtime adversaries are seeking ways to return to the negotiating table and ease a nearly 30-year-old diplomatic standoff.
President Obama’s administration has sought to start a dialogue with Iran – a departure from the Bush administration’s tough talk.
Iran had mostly dismissed the overtures, continuing to take hard-line steps like putting an American journalist on trial on espionage allegations.
But in his speech Wednesday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad changed his tone, saying that Iran was preparing new proposals aimed at breaking an impasse with the West over its nuclear program.
“The Iranian nation is a generous nation. It may forget the past and start a new era, but any country speaking on the basis of selfishness will get the same response the Iranian nation gave to Mr. Bush,” Ahmadinejad told thousands in the southeastern city of Kerman.
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton discussed Ahmadinejad’s comments during a meeting Wednesday with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
“With respect to the latest speeches and remarks out of Iran, we welcome dialogue,” Clinton said. “We’ve been saying that we are looking to have an engagement with Iran, but we haven’t seen anything that would amount to any kind of proposal at all.”
She said the six nations trying to lure Iran back to the negotiating table would have more to say in the coming days. Those countries, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, asked Solana last week to invite Iran to a new round of talks.
Solana said Iran has not formally responded to the invitation, and he declined to comment on Ahmadinejad’s remarks.