INTERNATIONAL Iran's president offers 'proposal' in letter to Bush

The letter is not a proposal, the U.S. secretary of state said.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's president wrote to President Bush on Monday proposing what the nation's top nuclear negotiator called a new "diplomatic opening" between the two countries. The United States was dismissive, saying the letter did not offer any new proposal.
The letter, which was not made public, appeared to be timed to blunt the U.S. drive for a U.N. Security Council vote this week to restrain the Islamic regime's nuclear ambitions. It was a striking change after the fiery Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's campaign to vilify Washington and its allies as bullies.
Iran contends it has the right to process uranium as fuel in nuclear reactors to generate electricity. The United States, Britain and France are concerned the program is a cover for making nuclear weapons.
The letter was the first from an Iranian head of state to an American president in 27 years and could signal a demand that Ahmadinejad be treated as an equal negotiating partner in any bid to untangle the international dispute.
Iran has long sought what it terms relations on an equal footing with the West.
Rice responds
In an interview with The Associated Press, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the letter was 17 or 18 pages long and covered history, philosophy and religion. It was not a diplomatic opening, she said.
"This letter isn't it. This letter is not the place that one would find an opening to engage on the nuclear issue or anything of the sort," Rice said. "It isn't addressing the issues that we're dealing with in a concrete way. ... It is most assuredly not a proposal."
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Bush had been briefed on the letter, which the White House received Monday through the Swiss embassy in Tehran. He would not comment on whether it was actually signed by the Iranian president.
"It does not appear to do anything to address the nuclear concerns" of the international community, McClellan told reporters traveling on Air Force One with Bush to Florida. According to government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham, the letter proposed "new solutions for getting out of international problems and the current fragile situation of the world."
Elham declined to reveal more, stressing "it is not an open letter." And when he was asked if the letter could lead to direct U.S.-Iranian negotiations, he replied: "For the time being, it's just a letter." Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki delivered the letter to the Swiss ambassador Monday, ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told the AP. The Swiss Embassy acts as a U.S. interest section in the Iranian capital.