(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said he doesn't want to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at a summit next week in New York.
“I'm not looking to meet him. I don't think they're ready yet. But they'll be ready,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday. “At the right time, they'll be ready. I never rule anything out, but I prefer not meeting him.”
Trump and Rouhani are both expected to attend the United Nations General Assembly next week. The U.S. president had entertained the idea of meeting his Iranian counterpart to try to open new talks on the 2015 nuclear deal Trump abandoned.
But Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tuesday that his country won't negotiate with the U.S. at any level. Iran has previously said it won't talk with U.S. officials unless Trump relaxes sanctions he implemented after leaving the nuclear accord.
“Sometimes they say negotiations without any precondition and sometimes with 12 conditions,” Khamenei said in comments published by the semi-official ISNA news agency. “Such statements either come from their disheveled policies or are a ploy to confuse the other side.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Jordan Fabian in Washington at jfabian6@bloomberg.net;Arsalan Shahla in Dubai at ashahla@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Kevin Whitelaw
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