The United States and Russia have agreed to hold further ministerial-level meetings in the future in a bid to stop Iran's sensitive nuclear work, a senior US official has said. State Department official Daniel Fried told reporters the agreement was reached in talks in New York between US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, their first since tensions soared over the Georgia conflict last month. Fried said both "agreed that they should have a ministers meeting" in the future, but set no date.
The United States and its partners Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany decided to call off a planned meeting this week in New York after Moscow complained that Washington had sought to "punish" it, apparently over Georgia. "They also agreed that the two governments should be in close contact to signal that the P5-plus-One process is intact," Fried said, referring to the six-country negotiations on Iran.
Meanwhile, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the CNN program 'Larry King Live' that he and his country wished no harm to Jews. "We have no problems with Jewish people," he said. "There are many Jews who live in Iran today ... but please pay attention to the fact that the Zionists are not Jews. They have no religion ... they just wear masks of religiosity. How can you possibly be religious and occupy the land of other people?" On the Holocaust, he said an impartial group should research whether it happened as has been claimed. "There is a claim that the extent of the calamity was what it was," Ahmadinejad told King. "There are people who agree with it. There are people who disagree."
Ahmadinejad has also caused controversy by previously suggesting there were no homosexuals in Iran. Regarding that statement, he said: "I said it is not the way it is here. In Iran this is considered a very… - obviously, most people dislike it. And we have, actually, a law regarding it and the law is enforced." However, he said, "we do pay attention that in Iran nobody interferes in the private lives of individuals. We have nothing to do with the private realm of people."
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