Iran president offers to meet with Bush

Iran’s hard-line president proposed Monday to hold public talks with President Bush on a wide range of issues, without saying whether that included international suspicions about the Iranian nuclear program or allegations of Iranian meddling in Iraq.

“Last year, I announced readiness for a televised debate over global issues with his excellency Mr. Bush. And now we announce that I am ready to negotiate with him about bilateral issues as well as regional and international issues,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying on the website of Al Alam, the state-run Arabic-language satellite television channel.

The Iranian leader did not elaborate on what specifically he was willing to discuss with Bush but said the talks “should be held with media present.”

It was not immediately clear if Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all state matters, supported Ahmadinejad’s proposal.

Khamenei has regularly rejected any direct talks between Tehran and Washington because of what he calls U.S. “bullying” of Iran.

The two countries have not had diplomatic relations since the 1979 storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

The Bush administration said Iran must abandon any nuclear weapon ambitions before talks could be held.

“Instead of offering televised debates or a media spectacle, the United States has offered actual discussions if Iran would only agree to what the international community has asked for repeatedly: Stop uranium enrichment and reprocessing,” Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, said Monday in Washington. “We’re ready whenever they are.”