Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Friday confirmed that the United States had shifted its position on diplomacy with Iran, with the decision to send a senior envoy to Geneva to participate in nuclear talks with Iran's top negotiator. But she insisted that Tehran must suspend its enrichment and reprocessing of nuclear materials for substantive talks with Washington. “The United States doesn't have any permanent enemies,” Rice said in response to a reporter's question on the unexpected move to send a diplomat to meet directly with Iran's negotiator Saeed Jalili in Geneva on Saturday. “And we hope this signal we're sending, that we fully support the track that Iran could take for a better relationship with the international community, is one the United States stands fully behind.” “We have been very clear that any country can change course,” Rice added. “This decision to send Undersecretary (William) Burns is an affirmation of the policy that we have been pursuing with our European allies ... for some time now.” “It is, in fact, a strong signal to the entire world that we have been very serious about this diplomacy and we will remain very serious about this diplomacy.” Asked in an interview with CNN, of which excerpts were aired Friday, whether sending Burns to Geneva was a major policy change, Rice answered: “I acknowledge that what we've done is to make a step that we think demonstrates to everyone our seriousness about this process. But what has not changed is that the US is determined to have negotiations only when Iran has suspended its enrichment and reprocessing.” The US is seeking to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in nearly 30 years, a British daily reported from Washington Thursday. “An announcement will be made in the next month to establish a US interests section - a halfway house to setting up a full embassy,” the paper's Washington bureau chief Ewen MacAskill said he had learned. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already indicated that he is not against the opening of a US mission in Tehran, saying Iran will consider favorably any request aimed at boosting relations between the two peoples. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference in Ankara Friday: “I think there may be talks on both the US founding an interest preserving bureau in Iran and direct flights between the two countries.” Washington cut off diplomatic ties with Tehran during the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, in which a group of militant Iranian students held 52 US diplomats hostage at the American embassy for 444 days.
