Salehi: US demanding talks with Iran

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Tehran has received a formal US statement of openness to joining new discussions with Iran.Speaking to reporters at a joint press conference with his visiting Ghanaian counterpart in Tehran, Salehi said that recently Iran received a letter from the US government in which they expressed the interest to hold talks with Iran. Salehi did not elaborate further on the content of the letter, but he said that "as usual, the letter (also) contained some contradictory and baseless subjects". On October 11, US officials alleged Iran's Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) plotted to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington by hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million. Iran has strongly denied involvement, describing the allegations as "baseless scenario". The high-profile accusations have brought fresh tensions to the relations between the two arch-foes, specially after the US officials intensified animosity towards Iran and started wide-scale interference in Iran's domestic affairs. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last Wednesday that the United States was planning to launch a "virtual embassy" for Iran by the end of this year, which would assist Iranians with online access to information about US visa and facilitation of study procedures in the United States. In her shocking remarks, Clinton said the United States was providing both technology and training to help Iranians circumvent government limits on the Internet and other forms of communication while seeking to expand sanctions on Tehran. Iranian officials responded angrily, warning the US to stay off Iran's internal affairs. The Islamic Association Union of Iranian Students said here Monday that the movement will occupy the US "virtual embassy" for Iran once it is launched, as what it did to the ex-US embassy in Tehran 32 years ago. The Iranian students' movement will not allow the United States to enter Iran, said the secretary of the movement, Seyed Ali Moussavi. The United States and Iran broke diplomatic relations in April 1980, after Iranian students seized the United States' espionage center at its embassy in Tehran. The two countries have had tense relations ever since.