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Saturday May 13, 12:50 AM US shrugs off pressure for direct talks with Iran Photo: AFP Click to enlarge WASHINGTON (AFP) - Despite growing pressure at home and abroad for direct talks with Iran, the United States is pointedly staying behind the scenes in efforts to rein in Tehran's suspected nuclear arms program. The Americans have resisted calls they sit down with the Iranians even as European efforts to negotiate a solution were stalled and a drive for tough UN action appeared to be going nowhere. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was the latest world figure to call for greater US involvement in negotiations to head off Iran's uranium enrichment research and alleged bid to build a nuclear bomb. Annan told reporters in Vienna on Friday that as long as the Iranians felt European negotiators had to check back with Washington on any decision, "I am not sure they will put everything on the table." Some European officials, particularly in Germany, have also urged the Americans to join the talks as have leaders from both sides of the political aisle in the United States. Former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, a Republican, and Madeleine Albirght, a Democrat, both urged President George W. Bush to follow up on a letter sent to him this week by Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. If the White House dismissed the first official contact between the governments in 26 years as nothing new, Kissinger saw it as a sign Tehran may want to settle the nuclear row. "Maybe it is the beginning of an understanding that they must come to some terms with the international community," he told reporters Friday in Lisbon after meeting with Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva. But the United States, which broke relations with Iran in 1980 after the seizure of US hostages in Tehran, has turned a deaf ear to calls to resume direct contacts with the Islamic republic on the nuclear issue. "The problems that Iran has right now are with the rest of the world, not just between the United States and Iran," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday. He said there were channels if Iran truly wanted to talk. The United States carries on contacts through the Swiss embassy in Tehran; the Iranians are represented here by Pakistan and have a UN mission in New York. Washington has also authorized its ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, to confer with the Iranians on the situation in Iraq, but no meetings have yet been reported. Still, the United States has preferred to leave its European allies Britain, France and Germany at the forefront of negotiations with Iran, which spurned an initial package of trade and other incentives. With a US push for sanctions against Iran running into opposition from Russia and China, the so-called EU-3 is currently trying to refashion a new offer for Tehran. But again, Washington is staying on the sidelines. A senior US official, who asked not to be named, said that despite some of the comments made in public, the Europeans were happy to keep the United States in a supporting role in the negotiations. "It's in our interest to be exactly where we are," the official told reporters this week after ministerial talks among the world powers in New York. "We have absolutely zero pressure." The US approach to Iran contrasts with its willingness to take part in multilateral negotiations on North Korea's acknowledged and more-advanced nuclear weapons program. US officials have never gone into detail about the diverging tacks. Asked about it Thursday, McCormack said only, "There are completely different histories and completely different situations." But the Americans have also refused to offer Iran the same security guarantees they have agreed to put in writing for Pyongyang. A State Department official said it was because of Tehran's documented links to terrorism. But the other senior US official, insisting such guarantees were "not in our interest," also evoked the US refusal to rule out the US of military force against Iran if diplomacy fails. "President Bush has said every time he has been asked over the last year and a half (that) all options are on the table and that means all options on the table."