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Salehi: US talks possible if Kha… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Photo: Andreas Manolis / Reuters

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Monday that direct, comprehensive talks with the US were possible, but only if approved by the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Salehi’s remarks to the official IRNA news agency come in response to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Friday comments that the US would be willing to hold bilateral talks if Tehran were “ready to engage.” She also said that the US was prepared to take reciprocal confidence-building steps alongside “verifiable” moves by Iran.

Clinton told the Saban Forum on Friday that “Should Iran finally be ready to engage in serious negotiations, we are ready.”

“When Iran is prepared to take confidence-building measures that are verifiable, we are prepared to reciprocate,” she added.

But she warned that “what we will not do is talk indefinitely. The window for negotiation will not stay open forever.”

While Salehi repeatedly pointing to the Supreme Leader as the final arbiter of Iranian policy, he also noted the various issues on which the US and Iran have engaged in recent years, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and even the nuclear program in the context of the P5+1 group, which includes England, France, Germany, China and Russia.

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