00:22GMT—8:22PM/EST
US – IRAN – DIPLOMACY
Washington, 2 July (IranVNC)—Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki today, said Iran had not received a request from the United States to open an “interest section” in Tehran. But he added his country was studying “issues relating to [diplomatic] interest sections in both countries and the issue of direct flights between Iran and the US proposed by Iran last year.”
In June, a New York Times report said the U.S. was considering opening a diplomatic post in Iran, similar to that which Washington operates in the Cuban capital, Havana.
Asked about the report in late June, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she would not comment on “internal deliberations in the U.S.” But, she added, “wse want the efforts that we’ve engaged in to have Iranian artists in the United States, American sports people in Iran. We’re determined to find ways to reach out to the Iranian people.”
U.S. officials have not denied these reports, but they stress the idea is in its beginning stages, CNN reports.
Speaking in New York, Mottaki said: “We welcome people to people contact between the two countries in the areas of tourism and scientific-academic cooperation between universities,” the official IRNA news agency reports.
Iran has an interest section at the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington, DC. But the United States, whose interests in Iran are protected by the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, has not had a diplomatic presence in that country since it broke diplomatic relations with Iran following the 1979 hostage crisis.
Sources: Islamic Republic News Agency, U.S. State Department website, CNN
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