White House Calls Iranian Letter a Ploy
UNITED NATIONS — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent an unexpected letter to President Bush on Monday, in what was seen as an overture for direct talks about Tehran's nuclear program, but U.S. officials dismissed the missive as an eleventh-hour ploy to forestall punitive action by the United Nations.
The letter is thought to be the first direct communication between the two countries' leaders since Iranian militants overthrew the shah and took Americans hostage at the U.S. Embassy in 1979. Diplomats hoped the letter signaled a new willingness on Iran's part to address the standoff over its uraniumenrichment program, which the Islamic Republic says is for peaceful energy purposes, but which much of the West suspects is a cover for trying to build nuclear weapons.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Associated Press that the letter did not contain serious proposals on the disputed nuclear program, but covered history, philosophy and religion over 17 or 18 pages.
The missive, passed on to the White House by the Swiss Embassy in Tehran because the U.S. has no presence there, also contained a litany of grievances and a demand to be treated as an international power, U.S. officials said.
"This letter isn't it. This letter is not the place that one would find an opening to engage on the nuclear issue or anything of the sort," Rice said. "It isn't addressing the issues that we're dealing with in a concrete way."
Bush, traveling to Florida, was briefed on the letter's contents. "It does not appear to do anything to address the nuclear concerns" of the international community, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters on Air Force One.
An Iranian official quoted by the state-run Fars News Agency characterized the letter from Ahmadinejad as an offer to address tensions.
"In this letter, while analyzing the world situation and pinpointing sources of problems, he has introduced new ways for getting out of the current, fragile international situation," government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said. The spokesman didn't say whether the letter addressed Iran's nuclear program.
As Rice prepared to meet counterparts from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the European Union on Monday night about how to deal with Iran's refusal to stop its nuclear activities, U.S. officials said they didn't even want to talk about talking to Iran.
