WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday all but rejected the idea of talks with Iran about quelling the violence in Iraq unless Tehran first acts to rein in its suspected nuclear weapons program.

In her first comment about the Iraq Study Group report, Rice was cool to its recommendation that the United States actively engage with Iran and Syria to try to stabilize Iraq, a key proposal from the bipartisan advisory panel.

The United States accuses Iraq and Syria of fomenting the raging insurgency nearly four years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

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Responding to the U.S. Iraq Study Group report, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Saturday that Iran will only hold direct talks with the United States on Iraq if Washington announces plans to pull its troops out.

On the question of direct talks between Iran and the United States, "the first and most essential step ... is the United States announce they have decided to withdraw from Iraq", Mottaki told reporters at a security conference in Bahrain.

He said that if the United States did announce a withdrawal "Iran is ready to help the administration to withdraw its troops from Iraq".

But Iran did not "see such political will yet in the United States".

Asked if Iran would ask for concessions if it helped with Iraq, Mottaki said: "Let the United States withdraw from Iraq first and then we could talk about the details."

Livni: Israel-PA conflict is not key to Mideast calm
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Friday said that Israel and moderate Arab countries share concerns over Iran's threatening policies, Israel Radio reported on Saturday

In a speech at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington D.C. Livni said she believes that Iran poses the gravest danger for the Middle East, due to its support of radical Islam, and that the Hamas government partakes of this extremism.

Livni said that the tensions and conflicts in the Middle East are the result of clashing ideologies, of moderate and radical forces, and not because of land disputes. The foreign minister added that several Arab leaders have told her off record that they are concerned by political radicalism backed by Iran.

Rejecting some of the conclusions presented in the Baker-Hamilton report on the U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, Livni said that the region's core problems would not be resolved by bringing an end to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The foreign minister did not, however, make a direct reference to the report, the radio said.

Rice defends Bush's Middle East policy
Rice defended President George W. Bush's push to bring democracy to the Middle East - an idea conspicuously absent from the panel's recommendations - saying it would remain a "centerpiece" of U.S. foreign policy.

While saying she saw "an opening" for progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace, Rice did not endorse the panel's call for new diplomatic push for a "comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace."

Speaking at a news conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Rice was skeptical of engaging with Iran about Iraq, suggesting Tehran was bound to demand some payback -- probably over its atomic program -- in return.

The United States has offered to hold wide-ranging talks with Iran if it first suspends uranium enrichment, which can produce fuel for nuclear power plans or atomic bombs.

"As to Iran and Syria, let's remember that the issue here is behavior ... Can you change the behavior of these states?" she asked. "I have to believe that, if the assumption is that Iran does not want an unstable Iraq for whatever reason, or that Syria does not want an unstable Iraq, that they will act on that because it's in their interests to do so.

"If, in fact, they're (the Iranians) looking for compensation to stop helping destabilize Iraq, that's another matter altogether, because one would have to ask: What compensation are they looking for?" she added.

"I don't think the Iranians are going to be prepared to neatly compartmentalize our discussions on stabilization of Iraq over here, the nuclear program over here. The Iranians have a set of interests and that's what I mean by compensation -- it's best to do this within the context of trying to deal with the nuclear program," she said. "We have a serious problem if Iran continues its current course toward the development of technologies that will lead to a nuclear weapon."

Iran denies it is pursuing nuclear weapons and has refused to suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.

The United States broke diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980 when 52 Americans were held hostage by Iranian militants who seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic revolution.