Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei opposes holding direct negotiations with the US, an Iranian newspaper cited a senior politician as saying.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei opposes holding direct negotiations with the United States, an Iranian newspaper on Monday cited a senior politician as saying.
The comments by vice speaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar appeared to be in contradiction of talks on Tehran's disputed nuclear programme that took place in Switzerland earlier this month and that included officials from the two old foes.
Relations with the United States are a sensitive issue in the Islamic Republic, whose clerical leaders see Washington as the Great Satan guilty of "global arrogance".
"Presently, the Supreme National Security Council and the supreme leader emphasise that our strategic policies are based on the absence of negotiations with the United States," Hambastegi newspaper quoted Bahonar as saying.
"That is why we will not have any direct negotiations with the United States," he said at a meeting of an Islamic engineers association, the reformist daily reported.
Bahonar did not elaborate on what he meant with "direct negotiations". But he may have been referring to wide-ranging bilateral talks aimed at normalising US-Iran relations, rather than ruling out all contact between Tehran and Washington.
Bahonar is a conservative MP who often criticises the government of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has said he favours dialogue with other countries including the United States if such contacts are based on justice and respect.
Khamenei has the final say on all matters of state, including the nuclear programme and foreign relations.
The United States severed ties with Tehran shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution. But Iranian and US officials took part in talks in Geneva on October 1 aimed at resolving a long-running standoff over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
In the Hambastegi report, Bahonar did not mention the Geneva meeting between Iran, the United States, Russia, China, Germany, France and Britain or follow-up talks held in Vienna last week.
"The policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is based on the absence of official negotiations with the United States...the conditions for such negotiations must emerge, which have not as yet emerged," Bahonar said.
The United States and its allies accuse Iran of seeking to develop nuclear bombs. Iran, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, denies this and says its nuclear programme is aimed at generating electricity.
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