"Before the chickenhawks bomb, you will deny me three times."

Well, this administration is now outright rejecting an offer from Iran that would allow snap inspections of its nuclear facilities.

NEW YORK (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed a letter that Iran's president sent to President Bush on Monday, saying the first direct communication from an Iranian leader in 27 years does not help resolve the standoff over Tehran's disputed nuclear program.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator called the surprise letter a new "diplomatic opening" between the two countries, but Rice said it was not.

"This letter is not the place that one would find an opening to engage on the nuclear issue or anything of the sort," the top U.S. diplomat said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It isn't addressing the issues that we're dealing with in a concrete way."

Rice said the letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was 17 or 18 pages long and covered history, philosophy and religion.

An Iranian official quoted by the state-run Fars News Agency characterized the letter from Ahmadinejad as an offer to address tensions.

"In this letter, while analyzing the world situation and pinpointing sources of problems, he has introduced new ways for getting out of the current, fragile international situation," government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said. The spokesman didn't say whether the letter addressed Iran's nuclear program.

As Rice prepared to meet counterparts from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the European Union on Monday night about how to deal with Iran's refusal to stop its nuclear activities, U.S. officials said they didn't even want to talk about talking to Iran.

"We don't have anything to say to Iran until they give up their pursuit of nuclear weapons," said John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. "Iranians are always interested in talking right before everyone puts the squeeze on them…. Then once the squeeze lets up a little bit, back they go to enrichment, back they go to perfecting their conversion technology, back they go to the pursuit of nuclear weapons."