January 24, 2007	Wednesday	Muharram 04, 1428

DUBAI, Jan 23: A US State Department official ruled out talks with Iran and said on Tuesday that a second US aircraft carrier strike group now steaming toward the Middle East is Washington's way of warning Tehran not to challenge America.

Nicholas Burns, the US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, said Iran must halt enrichment of uranium before the Bush administration will agree to direct negotiations. Several prominent American leaders have urged Bush to seek Iran's help quelling sectarian conflict in neighbouring Iraq.

“The Middle East isn't a region to be dominated by Iran. The Gulf isn't a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That's why we've seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region,” Burns said in an address to the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, an influential think-tank.

“Iran is going to have to understand that the United States will protect its interests if Iran seeks to confront us,” Burns continued.

“We will defend our interests if we are challenged. That might be a message Iran must understand.”

US officials said Burns was in the Middle East to outline specifics of new US strategies for Iraq and Iran following a visit to the region last week by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

But the audience of Dubai-based diplomats and analysts appeared dismayed by Burns' tough talk on Iran. Some complained that US actions were already threatening regional stability and asked the American diplomat to sort out Iraq and the Israel-Palestinian conflict before turning attention to Iran.

“What we are not interested in is another war in the region,” Mohammed al-Naqbi, who heads the Gulf Negotiations Centre, told Burns. “Iraq is your problem, not the problem of the Arabs. You destroyed a country that had institutions. You handed that country to Iran. Now you are crying to Europe and the Arabs to help you out of this mess.”

The US and Iran are locked in a standoff over Tehran's defiance of UN demands to halt uranium enrichment, which can produce fuel for both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.

Iran says it intends only to generate energy, but Washington and some of its allies suspect Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons. The UN imposed limited sanctions on Iran last month.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last week that the country is “ready for anything.” Iran conducted missile tests on Monday, the first of five days of military manoeuvres southeast of Tehran.

The US aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis and several accompanying ships are heading toward the Gulf to join an aircraft carrier group already in the region, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Stennis is expected to arrive in late February.

The Stennis's arrival in the Middle East will mark the first time since the US-led Iraq invasion in 2003 that the United States has had two carrier battle groups in the region.

The US Navy said today that the minesweeper USS Gladiator arrived in the Persian Gulf, one of six such ships — four American, two British — now plying the Gulf for anti-ship mines.—AP