(RIA Novosti) - Moscow welcomes a U.S. initiative to hold direct talks with Tehran to solve the crisis around its nuclear program, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Thursday.
The ministry also said Moscow hoped that "U.S. involvement in talks would lead to an improvement in U.S.-Iranian relations, given the crisis that has been affecting the interests of the two nations for more than 20 years."
"Russia will for its part continue active participation in collective efforts to find a political and diplomatic solution [to the Iranian issue]," the ministry said, reports Trend.
"It is important that the scope of the negotiations should not be complicated by attempts to threaten Iran or to include in the agenda issues that are irrelevant to the main task of settling the Iranian nuclear program," the ministry said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said earlier Thursday that Iran was ready to start talking to the United States, but refused to stop work on uranium enrichment.
"The United States needs to change its attitude if it wants to establish new relations with Iran," the minister said.
He added that a statement by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Wednesday was illogical and contained no new possible solution to the issue.
Rice said that the U.S. proposal to take part in EU3 negotiations with Iran did not mean that U.S. President George Bush had ruled out a military solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.