TEHRAN, March 14: The United States and Iran are engaged in direct contacts in an effort to resolve regional problems, a senior Iranian politician was quoted as saying on Thursday.

“There are at present contacts of a sort ongoing on crisis management and to exchange information, without intermediaries,” Mohsen Armin informed parliamentary journalists on Wednesday, according to a pro-reform daily, Norouz.

Describing the process as “normal”, Armin said: “One cannot speak of negotiations, and such contacts have always taken place in previous years.”

He implied that the contacts were at government level, informing a journalist that they were not between members of the reformist-majority Iranian parliament and US congres.

Political sources here said they had taken place in recent months in Ankara and Nicosia, and covered Afghanistan.

Tehran and Washington, which have no diplomatic relations, have also participated in meetings of a special commission of Afghanistan’s neighbours plus the United States and Russia.

But US President George Bush has lumped Iran with Iraq and North Korea on a so-called “axis of evil”.—AFP