Iran's Rafsanjani Says Open to Dialogue with U.S.
February 24, 2004
Agence France Presse
AFP
Iran's powerful former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani revealed Tuesday he was open to the idea of dialogue with the United States, but that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was opposed.
"For me, talking is not a problem. But this is only if it was for me to decide on personally," Rafsanjani, who now heads the Islamic republic's top political arbitration body, said in an interview with the hardline Kayhan afternoon daily.
But he added that because Iran's late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his successor as supreme leader, Khamenei, were both opposed to talks with Washington, "I follow them and I say nothing."
Rafsanjani was Iran's president from 1989 to 1997, and he remains a key figure at the top of the 25-year-old clerical regime as head of the Expediency Council.
He also told the paper there were no new developments in Iran's relations with Washington.
"They continue to send us threatening messages and continue to raise the four questions," he said, referring to Washington's concerns over Iran's nuclear programme, opposition to the Middle East peace process, alleged support of militant groups and human rights.
"But they are stuck in the mud in Iraq, and they know that if Iran wanted to, it could make their problems even worse," Rafsanjani told the paper.
He said the two sides were in contact over Iraq and Afghanistan, "but regarding diplomatic relations, there is nothing".
When asked if Iran should hold a referendum on resuming relations with the United States - a possibility raised recently in an official strategic journal - Rafsanjani refused to give his view, "given that I know that the policy of the supreme leader is hostile".
He said Ayatollah Khamenei was the "axis" of the country and that it was "important not to create divisions".
Rafsanjani did acknowledge that there had been some "positive signals" from Washington, but said these were "only signals".
Iran and the United States severed diplomatic relations in 1980, after the Islamic revolution when the US embassy here was seized by students and its diplomatic staff and guards held hostage for 444 days.
Two years ago, US President George W. Bush famously lumped the country into an "axis of evil" along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Stalinist North Korea.
http://www.afp.com/english/home/