Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Mookie and Mottaki are good buddies.

WASHINGTON- Tough talk on Iran’s nuclear program has raised the specter of a possible US attack, but tensions between the two diplomatic foes nevertheless appear to have eased on the issue of securing Iraq.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Tuesday that Iran had accepted an invitation by Washington for a fourth round of bilateral talks on curbing bloodshed in Iran’s violence-wracked western neighbor.

“Iran has agreed with this request within the framework of its policy of helping the Iraqi people,” Mottaki told reporters.

“The exact date of the fourth round of the talks will be announced in the near future” in Iraq, he said.

He said Washington had requested the new talks through the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which looks after US interests in Iran in the absence of a US mission.

The United States broke off diplomatic ties with Iran in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed the talks were planned but did not specify a date.

“We have communicated to the Iranian Government that we are agreeable to that. We have not yet received back a reply,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

“We are open to using this channel as a way of talking directly about important issues concerning security in Iraq. We don’t yet have a date.”

A major source of diplomatic tension between Washington and Tehran is Iran’s nuclear program. The United States has stepped up sanctions on Tehran to punish it for what it believes is a drive to make nuclear arms.

(AFP)