JERUSALEM, May 10: US and Iranian officials met face to face in Geneva “very recently” to talk about Iraq and Afghanistan, a US official said on Saturday.

The meeting took place with the help of the United Nations but only the US and Iranian officials were present, he said.

Iran and United States have met previously in the context of multilateral talks with Afghanistan’s neighbours and Russia.

The official said the aim of the contacts was to discuss specific issues, not to establish diplomatic relations or initiate the open-agenda dialogue which former US President Bill Clinton sought with Iran.

“Our focus has not been on pursing dialogue but on addressing particular issues of interest to us,” he said.

The United States cut diplomatic ties with Iran after radical students seized its embassy in Tehran in 1979 following the revolution which toppled the US-backed Shah.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, talking to reporters on his plane between Washington and Tel Aviv on Saturday, said: “The issue of diplomatic relations is not on the table right now but we have ways (of communicating with Tehran), and we use them on a regular basis, very recently.”

“We do have channels that we are using with the Iranians and communicating to them that they ought to review their policies in light of the changed strategic situation, with particular emphasis on their nuclear weapons development programme,” he added.

SHIFTING RHETORIC: Iran and the United States also have a shared interest in the fate of the Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mujahideen, which has military forces in Iraq.

Both countries want to disband the Mujahideen, but analysts say the United States is unlikely to hand over the Mujahideen fighters to Iran, where many might face execution. The Bush administration has shifted its rhetoric on Iran several times since taking office in Jan 2001.

At first it sought dialogue, but after the Sept 11 attacks in 2001 President George Bush branded Iran part of the “axis of evil”, along with Iraq and North Korea.—Reuters