“Iran's general policy with respect to relations with the US has not changed and no decision has been made in this regard,” Ali Akbar Velayati said on Saturday.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on September 26 that an improvement in the Iran-US relations would be possible if Washington changed its behavior toward Tehran.
“Iran is committed to its past policies founded by Imam [Ayatollah Rouhollah] Khomeini and approved by the Leader [Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei],” Velayati added.
Referring to talks between Iran and the P5+1 (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany), Velayati said, “Iran has never refrained from negotiations. The Islamic Republic is ready to hold talks whenever they are ready to negotiate.”
Commenting on the removal of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) from the US list of terrorist organizations, Velayati said, “This shows US bankruptcy because it has been proved that the MKO is a terrorist cell, and aside from the list of their assassinations going public, they (the MKO) also admit to have carried out assassinations in Iran.”
On Friday, Washington formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations one week after the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent the US Congress a classified communication about the move.
Members of the MKO, who had murdered over 17,000 Iranians since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, fled to Iraq in the 1980s, where they had the support of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and set up Camp Ashraf in the eastern province of Diyala near the Iranian border.
The group, which is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community, has also carried out countless terrorist acts against Iraqi civilians.
Iran has repeatedly called on the Iraqi government to expel the MKO, but the US has been putting pressure on Baghdad to resist the calls.
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