There is a deep split within the Bush administration about whether to talk to Iran, the New York Times reported Friday.

Currently, the State Department headed by Secretary Condoleezza Rice tends to have dialogue with Iran while hard-liners, many in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, are opposed to the so- called "concession" to Iran.

Rice and a number of her top deputies, including David Satterfield, Rice's top adviser on Iraq, and Zalmay Khalilzad, American ambassador to Iraq, have concluded that recent American moves to pressure Iran now allow the United States to negotiate with Tehran from a position of strength, a unidentified senior U.S. official was quoted as saying.

Those advocates of engagement argue that the recent ratcheting up of American rhetoric against Iran, a naval buildup in the Persian Gulf and arrests of Iranian officials in Iraq have now given American officials a better hand to play at the bargaining table.

"The United States is in a position now where I think we send a very strong message to the Iranians through the president's decision to send the carrier strike group into the gulf, through the fact that we've picked up some of their people who have been engaged in activities to harm our soldiers and the fact that we've been shutting down the international financial system to them," Rice said Wednesday in an interview.

"I think we're in a much stronger position to go to a neighbor's meeting," Rice said of the Saturday international conference on Iraq's security, during which officials of Iran and Syria are expected to attend.

On Thursday, Satterfield said in a news briefing that "If we are approached over orange juice by the Syrians or the Iranians to discuss an Iraq-related issue that is germane to this topic -- stable, secure, peaceful, democratic Iraq -- we are not going to turn and walk away."

Contrary to opinions above, U.S. hard-liners have argued that the U.S. should not be seen as making concession to Iran, and that talking is a concession, the unidentified senior official said.

Source: Xinhua