Obama-Rouhani exchange possible but not planned

The White House left the door open to a direct exchange between President Obama and Iran's president, as the two leaders headed to the United Nations Monday. If a meeting takes place, even on a lower level, it is expected to be informal, White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters ahead of Obama's scheduled arrival in New York about 12:30 p.m. EDT. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's arrival time was not immediately clear. "The fact of the matter is, we don't have a meeting scheduled with President Rouhani," Rhodes told reporters in a conference call. "But again, we're always open to diplomacy if we believe it can advance our objectives. And in this instance, our objective is an Iran that meets its international obligations." Those obligations include demonstrating its nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes, he said. Washington contends Tehran is well along toward developing an atomic weapons program. Obama and Rouhani are to address the U.N. General Assembly's annual meeting within hours of each other Tuesday. This has raised speculation of the first face-to-face exchange between a U.S. and Iranian leader since President Jimmy Carter met with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in December 1977, 14 months before Iran's Islamic Revolution. Rhodes said Obama has expressed his willingness since his 2007 pre-election campaign to have meetings directly with Iran with no preconditions if he saw an opportunity for progress. Rouhani has said he is ready to meet with no preconditions. Rhodes was asked on the call Friday if the White House saw the possibility of any level of "opportune" conversations between Washington and Tehran in New York. "I can't predict every interaction that might take place at different levels at the U.N.," Rhodes said. "It's possible that there could be some interaction at different levels, but there's just simply none planned at this moment that falls in line with the type of formal meetings that the State Department and the White House are pursuing heading up to the U.N. General Assembly. "But I think that the tone we're setting is one of openness to engagement with Iran, but insistence that their words have to be followed by actions." He added, "The issues between the United States and Iran are not ones that would be settled in any one discussion." Rouhani said in Tehran Sunday, before departing for New York, if Washington and other Western powers "accept the rights of Iranians, our nation will stand for peace, friendship and cooperation, and together we can solve regional and even global problems." His reference to Iranian "rights" was seen by many Western diplomats as an allusion to Iran's asserted right to enrich uranium. Iran insists that since its program is for peaceful purposes -- which the United States disputes -- Tehran has a legal right to enrich uranium. Washington says Tehran must show unequivocally its program is simply to generate electricity. Rouhani said the West must go beyond "its own interests" in negotiations to consider "mutual interests." His address, at a military parade marking the 33rd anniversary of Iraq's 1980 invasion of Iran, did not mention Washington directly but did touch on the Obama administration's frequent statement "all options are on the table" in its position over Iran's nuclear program. "War and diplomacy have no relation to one another, and no free and logical nation accepts diplomacy and war on the same table," Rouhani said.