MADRID, Spain - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday the United States is willing to look at creative ways to get Iran to halt its nuclear activities and once again denied the U.S. is preparing for war with the Islamic regime.
But she said Washington was unwilling to discuss rewards for Tehran until it complies with UN demands to stop uranium enrichment that could lead to the development of an atomic bomb, something Iran denies it is doing.
"The president has made clear that we are on a diplomatic course," she told reporters in Madrid when asked about comments by the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog who expressed concern that "new crazies" are girding for war with Iran.
"I have no idea, you can ask him who he is talking about," Rice said, referring to remarks by Mohamad ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that appeared to refer to members of the Bush administration, including perhaps Vice President Dick Cheney.
"The president of the United States has made very clear what our policy is," she said. "That policy is supported by all the members of his Cabinet and by the vice president of the United States."
The hawkish Cheney has repeatedly said the administration is keeping all options on the table for dealing with Iran, even as efforts continue to seek a diplomatic resolution to the dispute.
Earlier, ElBaradei was quoted by the BBC as saying he wanted to prevent the situation from escalating into war.
"I have no brief other than to make sure we don't go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other," he said. "You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran.'"
ElBaradei said he was not referring to Bush but rather to "those who have extreme views and say the only solution is to impose your will by force."
Rice said the United States was committed to diplomacy and signaled support for a behind-the-scenes effort to strike a technical and semantic compromise that could allow Iran to stop, or suspend, disputed activities and open the door for international negotiations.
"Where we've been flexible is on how we get to suspension," she said a day after inconclusive talks between European and Iranian nuclear negotiators also in Madrid.
"Where we have been flexible is on myriad ways that a consultation process could lead the Iranians to a position where they could suspend," she said.
The UN Security Council has demanded that Iran at least temporarily suspend its enrichment of uranium, an ingredient both for nuclear energy or nuclear weapons, before talks on a package of incentives could begin.
Rice said she saw no evidence that Thursday's talks produced any momentum, but noted that the two negotiators had agreed to meet again in two weeks.
In Washington, deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Iran's refusal to stop uranium enrichment made new UN sanctions more likely.
"They have not agreed to suspend their uranium enrichment activities as they are required to do and that unfortunately means that where we wind up going is continuing down the negative pathway of sanctions," he told reporters.
"I expect we will be starting very soon with consultation on developing the next round of sanctions through a new UN Security Council resolution," Casey said.
In what appeared to be an attempt to delay the threat of new UN sanctions, Iran pledged on Thursday to cooperate with the nuclear monitoring agency probing its atomic program, an official told The Associated Press.
That would end years of stonewalling by Iran and help the International Atomic Energy Agency establish whether Tehran's past nuclear efforts were exclusively peaceful in nature.
UN and other officials, who demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue, said Friday a decision by Iran to help clear up past activities would represent a major concession.
Suspension of nuclear efforts is an inexact term, both for diplomats and the UN's nuclear experts, and analysts said it leaves negotiators some wiggle room. Iran has not seemed publicly interested, but European diplomats have sought some middle ground.
The United States wants the suspension to become permanent, leaving Iran unable to develop weapons but theoretically able to operate nuclear power stations with uranium processed offshore by others. The complicated, multistep process of manufacturing nuclear-ready uranium is called the fuel cycle.
"The issue is that any Iranian civilian nuclear program really can't have the fuel cycle attached to it, or the ability to perfect that technology," Rice said, something that could be worked out once Iran sat down for detailed talks.
The United States agreed to join any such talks last year on condition that Iran stop its disputed uranium work, but Iran has refused. Work has gone ahead rapidly in Iran during a two-year diplomatic deadlock.
"What we can't do is to have negotiations take place while the Iranians continue to perfect their nuclear technology and use those negotiations as cover," for possibly covert work on a bomb, Rice said. "That's what we can't accept."
