Tehran wants U.S. to admit ‘its mistakes’

MUNICH | Iran sternly dismissed decades of U.S. policies targeting Tehran and declared Friday that the new American administration had to admit past wrongs before it could hope for reconciliation.

The comments by Iranian parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani at an international security conference in Munich appeared to be the most detailed outline yet of Tehran’s expectations from President Obama’s administration.

“The old carrot-and-stick policy must be discarded,” he said, alluding to Western threats and offers of rewards to coax Iran to give up nuclear activities the West views as threatening. “This is a golden opportunity for the United States.”

Mr. Obama has said the U.S. is ready for direct talks with Iran in efforts to overcome concerns that its nuclear program could be used to develop atomic weapons. Tehran denies that and insists its aims are peaceful. The Bush administration refused one-on-one negotiations with Tehran on the issue unless it made significant nuclear concessions beforehand.

There was no immediate U.S. reaction to Mr. Larijani’s comments.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was due to address the conference Saturday and was expected to try to muster more European troops for Afghanistan. But there is no sign that general European favor for the new U.S. administration has overcome the reluctance of some allies to contribute more soldiers.

The U.S. plans to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, roughly doubling its presence. But coming into the conference, German officials have reiterated that they do not want to commit to more forces. Still, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said before the meetings that she did not mean the door to such discussions was closed.

Mr. Larijani evaded a question on whether he planned to meet with Mr. Biden, but said Washington needed to change its tactics in engaging Iran, “to a chess game from a boxing match.”

Senior Iranian officials have cautiously welcomed the new U.S. proposal of direct talks. But on Friday, Mr. Larijani, his country’s former chief nuclear negotiator, delivered a blistering condemnation of what he described as failed and evil U.S. actions against his country and in the region. He declared the U.S. had to own up to the past before it could hope for a better future with Iran.

“In the past years, the U.S. has burned many bridges, but the new White House can rebuild them” if it “accepts its mistakes and changes its policies,” Mr. Larijani said.

He condemned Washington’s backing for Iraq in its 1980s war against Iran and its support of Israel. Mr. Larijani said those policies and others in the region failed in their declared purpose of rooting out terrorism and finding hidden weapons of mass destruction.

On the nuclear standoff, he said Washington “has tried to sabotage any diplomatic solution.” Without U.S. acknowledgment of failure and wrongdoing, “do you expect this pain to go away?” he asked.