The United States was urging United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon to deliver his pledge to raise the issues including nuclear program in his meetings with Iranian officials, the State Department said on Wednesday.
"As we have been saying all along, we are urging Ban Ki-moon to follow through on his pledge to raise all of the difficult issues with Iran's leaders when he is there, not only the nuclear file, but concerns about terror, concerns about Iran's support for the Assad regime," department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
Ban arrived in Iran's capital of Tehran earlier in the day for a two-day summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) states, despite opposition from the U.S. and Israel over their standoff with the Islamic republic over its controversial nuclear program.
The UN secretary-general called Iran a country that "has a very important role to play" in helping end the Syrian crisis, saying " This is one of the important issues that I'm going to discuss with the Iranian leadership."
His view runs counter to the U.S. position that sees no role for Iran on the grounds that the country is offering material support for the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad in its 18-month conflict with the opposition.
"In this case we would agree with him that Iran has a role to play, and the role it can play is it can break with the Assad regime and stop providing material support and arms and advisers and all of these kinds of things," Nuland told reporters at a regular news briefing.
"So that's the message that we would like to see anybody attending the NAM meeting bring to Iranian officials," she added.
