'No need for talks with Washington on Iraq'

Tehran: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday said that there was "no need" for talks with the United States on the situation in Iraq.

"It's been announced by our experts that they are ready to talk about this issue with the United States, but unfortunately its behaviour was not good," Ahmadinejad told a news conference.

"Now we think that, God willing, with the establishment of a stable government in Iraq there is no more need to do so," he added.

"We hope that they let the Iraqi people govern their own country and leave them alone," Ahmadinejad said of the Americans.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has authorised the US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, to reach out to the Iranians for direct talks relating to Washington's concerns that Tehran was stirring up trouble in Iraq.

Any direct meeting would have marked a break in a near three-decade pause in open bilateral contacts between US and Iranian officials following the country's 1979 Islamic revolution.

Meanwhile, US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman on Monday said conducting business with Iran encourages its nuclear ambitions, when asked for his reaction to a $7 billion (Dh25.7 billion) gas pipeline deal between Iran, Pakistan and India.

"Doing business with Iran, it seems to me, at a certain level encourages this," he said.

The oil ministers of Iran, Pakistan and India said on Saturday they were very near a final agreement on a planned gas pipeline to pump Iranian gas to India, in defiance of US opposition. Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri said he expected the final deal to be signed in Tehran in June.

Bodman said he would meet with Indian oil minister Murli Deora, also attending the International Energy Forum in Doha.

"There are many things the United States has opposed in the past and supported later," Deora said.