TEHRAN, Nov 13: Iran said on Monday it was ready to consider any official US request to hold talks after Washington’s allies called on it to engage Tehran. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a keynote address to a seminar in London, called for Syria and Iran to be engaged in efforts to stem violence in Iraq and help secure Middle East peace. Australian Prime Minister John Howard, another US ally, backed the British proposal.

“If they (the United States) really want to hold talks with Iran, they should officially propose it and then Iran will review it,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said.

Iranian government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham earlier said Tehran would welcome any change in Washington’s policy, but he did not directly address the issue of talks.

“If there is a 180-degree turn in the policies of America it would be a blessed event,” Mr Elham told a weekly news conference.

“We hope that America reconsiders its policies, leaves the region alone, ... abandons war-mongering and supporting terrorist groups in this region,” Mr Elham said.

Tehran, which has had no ties with Washington since shortly after the 1979 revolution, often calls for the United States to change its behaviour in the region.

Talks between Iran and the United States on Iraq seemed possible in March, but the idea was shot down a month later by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said such negotiations were not needed.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last month signalled that Washington might join talks with Tehran to resolve the Iran nuclear issue, but only if Iran first suspended uranium enrichment, something it has repeatedly refused to do.—Reuters