Iran, U.S. have contacts but full relations far off: Spokesman

Tehran (Agence France-Presse): Diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States have not come up for discussion despite repeated contacts between the two countries, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday.

Hamid Reza Assefi referred to multilateral talks that included Iran and the U.S. on Afghanistan "within the framework of United Nations," in particular the Bonn conference in late 2001 concerning a post-Taliban interim government.

"During these negotiations, the issue of bilateral relations was not on the agenda and no negotiations were held in that regard", Assefi told reporters.

His comments came after the daily USA Today quoted Iranian and U.S. diplomatic sources on Monday as saying representatives of the two governments had met secretly in Cairo three times this year, the last time on May 3.

According to the newspaper, Zaimay Khalilzad, a special envoy named by U.S. President George W. Bush for Iraq and Afghanistan, led the U.S. delegation while a UN representative opened the talks but did not always stay on.

Washington and Tehran broke off diplomatic relations in 1980 after the Islamic revolution in Iran a year earlier led to the taking of hostages at the U.S. embassy.

But following U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran finds itself with U.S. troops on both sides and has begun to rethink its steadfast refusal to deal with the country often reviled as the "Great Satan".

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Saturday Washington is in contact with Tehran over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and developments in Iraq, but that the question of reestablishing diplomatic relations' is not on the agenda.

"We have ways of communicating with the Iranians and we use them on a regular basis, and very recently", Powell told reporters accompanying him to Israel on the first leg of a tour to the Middle East and Eastern Europe.