Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, sent a letter on Monday to United States President George Bush — the first such communication for 27 years — offering an analysis of global issues and ”new ways of getting out of the current delicate situation in the world”.
The US on Monday night rejected the letter as having no relevance. A US state department spokesperson said: ”Nothing in the letter addresses the issues on the table between Iran and the world, whether on the nuclear issue, terrorism or human rights.”
He added: ”Instead, it is a broad historical, philosophical exposition.”
The 18-page letter, which did not directly mention the nuclear dispute but ranges over issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, came as the foreign ministers of the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China met in New York to discuss tabling a United Nations security council resolution against Iran.
The meeting marked the international debut of Margaret Beckett, the new British Foreign Secretary. She met Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, for a one-on-one at the Waldorf hotel before sitting down to dinner with representatives from France, Germany, Russia and China.
After meeting Rice, Beckett made her first public comment as Foreign Secretary: ”I am delighted to be here.”
She said she had heard so much about Rice from her predecessor, Jack Straw, who enjoyed a strong rapport with his US counterpart, that ”I feel as if I know you already”. Rice said they had compared backgrounds and how they had risen to their present positions in politics.
Beckett, still getting up to speed, had no public comment on Iran, while Rice reiterated that the international community had to send a clear message that it could not develop a nuclear weapon.
Security council members are considering a British-French resolution, backed by the US, threatening punitive measures unless Iran abandons uranium enrichment. The West suspects the processing is aimed at making a bomb, but Tehran denies this.
Ahmadinejad’s letter was the first official communication from an Iranian president to his US counterpart since the 1979 Islamic revolution and the Tehran embassy siege, when 52 US diplomats were held hostage for 14 months.
Iranian officials would not give details of the contents of the letter, delivered through the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which handles US interests. A government spokesperson, Gholam Hossein Elham, said: ”He has given an analysis of the current world situation, and of new ways of getting out of the current delicate situation.”
The letter’s disclosure came a day after Iran’s Parliament wrote to the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, threatening withdrawal from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) if the security council adopts a resolution allowing for economic sanctions or military action. – Guardian Unlimited Â