UNITED NATIONS, July 3: Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has said his government might consider the American idea of opening a US diplomatic section in Tehran.

“Contacts between Iranians and the American people will be a useful step for better understanding of the two nations,” Mr Mottaki told reporters here on Wednesday.

Presently the Pakistan Embassy in Washington is handling Iran’s day-to-day consular and other affairs, including issuing of visas and passport documents. And the Swiss diplomatic mission represents US interests in Tehran.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has approved a review of the idea of putting American diplomats in an “interests section”, which would be hosted by a third party’s embassy in Tehran. However, State Department officials note that the idea is still in its infancy.

Interests sections provide a way to let a country post its diplomats in a nation with which it has no formal diplomatic relations.

If the US did open such an outpost, it would be the country’s first diplomatic presence in Iran since the two nations severed ties in 1979 after the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran by students loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini.

Iran has proposed a resumption of flights between Tehran and New York “for facilitating visits to Iran by the Iranian nationals living in the United States”.

Ms Rice recently said the United States had been attempting to reach out to the Iranian people. “We want more Iranians visiting the United States,” she remarked.

“We want the efforts that we’ve engaged in to have Iranian artists in the United States, American sports people in Iran. We’re determined to find ways to reach out to the Iranian people.”

The Iranian foreign minister, who is in New York to attend a meeting of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, said Iran supported academic and sport exchanges between the two countries.

He told reporters that Tehran had issued more visas to US journalists and others to visit Iran as compared to Washington, which was still reluctant to grant visas to Iranians.