TEHRAN, 20 February 2004 — Iran’s powerful former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said yesterday he was open to the idea of dialogue with the United States, but that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was opposed.
“For me, talking is not a problem. But this is only if it was for me to decide on personally,” Rafsanjani, who now heads the Islamic republic’s top political arbitration body, said in an interview with the hard-line Kayhan afternoon daily. But he added that because Iran’s late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his successor as supreme leader, Khamenei, were both opposed to talks with Washington, “I follow them and I say nothing.”
Rafsanjani was Iran’s president from 1989 to 1997, and remains a key figure at the top of the 25-year-old clerical regime. He also told the paper that there were no new developments in Iran’s relations with Washington.
“They continue to send us threatening messages and continue to raise the four questions,” he said, referring to Washington’s concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, opposition to the Middle East peace process, alleged support of militant groups and human rights.
