Barack Obama says reports Iran, US agreed to hold talks 'not true'

Washington: President Barack Obama said on that Monday that newspaper reports that Iran and the United States had agreed to hold one-on-one talks on Tehran's nuclear programme were "not true."

President Obama made the comment at a debate on foreign policy. The New York Times quoted unnamed US administration officials on Saturday as saying that secret exchanges between US and Iranian officials had resulted in an agreement "in principle" to hold direct talks.

"Those are reports in the newspaper, they are not true," President Obama said.