CRI听力:White House: Obama Open to Talk with Iran's Rouhani

The White House has offered a response to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's apparent softening on the country's nuclear issue.

Rouhani has gone on-record this week saying Tehran will never develop nuclear weapons.

White House spokesperson Jay Carney.

"It has long been the position of President Obama that he would, as president be willing to have bilateral negotiations with the Iranians, provided that the Iranians were serious about addressing the international community's insistence that they give up their nuclear weapons programs."

But at the same time, the White House is throwing cold-water on speculation the Presidents of Iran and the US might meet this coming week, saying no meetings between the two have been scheduled at the UN General Assembly.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon says the freshly-installed Iranian government is presenting a promising outlook to the international community.

However, the Israeli government is dismissing Rouhani's promise as an "attempt to deceive the world."

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev.

"What we heard from the Iranian leadership is unfortunately just sugar colored words. The simple fact is that Iran continues to enrich uranium, continues to move aggressively forward to have a nuclear weapon and this must stop. We need them to stop moving forward on plutonium and until they stop this reckless path to a nuclear weapon the international community has to keep the pressure on."

The Iranian government has insisted its nuclear programs are strictly for civilian purposes only.