US Forces must Leave Middle East before any Talks: Iran
http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?206749

excerpt:

Mahdi Kalhor, an adviser to Ahmadinejad on cultural and media affairs, said on Saturday that as long as US forces remain in the region and the US backs Israel, talks will not take place.

It was not clear if Kalhor`s comments reflect the government thinking because Kahlor, despite his high level position, is not responsible for foreign policy issues.

The United States and Iran broke diplomatic relations in April 1980, after Iranian students seized the United States` espionage center at its embassy in Tehran. The two countries have had tense relations ever since.

Iran and the US are locked in a standoff over Tehran`s progress in the field of civilian nuclear technology. Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative document to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under three rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West`s calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.

Tehran has dismissed West`s demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians` national resolve to continue the path.

Iran insists that it should continue enriching uranium because it needs to provide fuel to a 300-megawatt light-water reactor it is building in the southwestern town of Darkhoveyn as well as its first nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr.

Iran currently suffers from an electricity shortage that has forced the country into adopting a rationing program by scheduling power outages - of up to two hours a day - across both urban and rural areas.

Iran plans to construct additional nuclear power plants to provide for the electricity needs of its growing population.

The Islamic Republic says that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of IAEA`s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.

Political observers believe that the United States has remained at loggerheads with Iran over the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran`s nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for other third-world countries. Washington has laid much pressure on Iran to make it give up the most sensitive and advanced part of the technology, which is uranium enrichment, a process used for producing nuclear fuel for power plants.

Washington`s push for additional UN penalties contradicts the report by 16 US intelligence bodies that endorsed the civilian nature of Iran`s programs. Following the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and similar reports by the IAEA head - one in November and the other one in February - which praised Iran`s truthfulness about key aspects of its past nuclear activities and announced settlement of outstanding issues with Tehran, any effort to impose further sanctions on Iran seems to be completely irrational.