Dubai, Feb 4 (AP) Iran's president said on Tuesday that he instructed the country's foreign minister to "pursue fair and equitable negotiations" with the United States, the first clear sign from Tehran it wants to try to negotiate as tensions remain high with Washington after the Mideast country's bloody crackdown on nationwide protests last month.

But possible talks were thrust into question hours later when US Central Command said a US Navy fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone that was approaching an American aircraft carrier early Tuesday morning. The Iranian Mission to the UN did not immediately comment on the incident.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged that Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff has been planning to hold talks with Iranian officials in Turkey later this week. It was the first direct acknowledgment of the talks by the White House.

"These talks, as of right now, are still scheduled," Leavitt said in response to whether the drone incident could impact Witkoff's planned talks with Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. "President Trump is always wanting to pursue diplomacy first, but obviously it takes two to tango," Leavitt said. "You need a willing partner to achieve diplomacy and that's something that special envoy Witkoff is intent on exploring and discussing." The shift toward negotiations marked a major turn for reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who had broadly warned Iranians for weeks that the turmoil in his country had gone beyond his control. It also signals that the president received support from Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for talks that the 86-year-old cleric previously had dismissed.

US shoots down drone US Central Command said the drone "aggressively approached" the aircraft carrier on Tuesday, just before sunrise, with "unclear intent" and it "continued to fly toward the ship despite deescalatory measures taken by US forces operating in international waters." The Shahed-139 drone was shot down by an F-35C fighter jet from the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was sailing about 805 kilometres from Iran's southern coast, Hawkins said.

In a separate incident later on Tuesday, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces harassed a merchant vessel flying the American flag and carrying an American crew, Central Command spokesman Captain Tim Hawkins said in a statement.

Two boats and an Iranian Mohajer drone approached the ship, Stena Imperative, "at high speeds and threatened to board and seize the tanker,' Hawkins' statement said.

The position of the incident appeared to be in Iranian territorial waters, according to the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre. Iran had warned of a naval drill by the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days.

The destroyer USS McFaul responded and escorted the Stena Imperative with defensive air support, the statement said, adding that the merchant vessel was now sailing safely.

Turkey attempting to broker negotiations Turkey had been working behind the scenes to make the talks happen there later this week as US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff is travelling in the region. A Turkish official later said the location of talks was uncertain but that Turkey was ready to support the process.

Foreign ministers from Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also been invited to attend the talks, if they happen, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity as they did not have permission to speak to journalists.

But whether Iran and the US can reach an agreement remains to be seen, particularly as US President Donald Trump now has included Iran's nuclear programme in a list of demands from Tehran in any talks. Trump ordered the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites during the 12-day war Israel launched against Iran in June.

On Tuesday, Araghchi spoke by phone with his counterparts from Oman, Qatar, Turkey and Kuwait, but did not mention anything about a possible venue.

Witkoff meets with Netanyahu in Israel Witkoff met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday and discussed plans for disarming Hamas ahead of possible reconstruction and the situation in Iran, Netanyahu's office said.

Netanyahu warned Witkoff that "Iran has repeatedly proven it cannot be trusted to meet its commitments." Israel demands that any agreement with Iran include removing enriched uranium from the country, stopping the enrichment of uranium, limiting the creation of ballistic missiles and ending support for Tehran's proxies, according to an official familiar with the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

"Right now, we're talking to them, we're talking to Iran, and if we could work something out, that'd be great," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. "And if we can't, probably bad things would happen." Mike Pompeo, a hard-liner on Iran who served as CIA director and secretary of state in Trump's first term, said it was "unimaginable that there can be a deal." "I think they may come away with some set of understandings," Pompeo said at Dubai's World Governments Summit. "But to think that there's a long-term solution that actually provides stability and peace to this region while the ayatollah is still in power is something I pray for but find unimaginable." Khamenei adviser speaks on the nuclear issue Late Monday, the pan-Arab satellite channel Al Mayadeen, which is politically allied with the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, aired an interview with Ali Shamkhani, a top Khamenei adviser on security.

He suggested that if the talks happened, they would be indirect at the beginning, and move to direct talks only if a deal appeared to be attainable. Direct talks with the US long have been a highly charged political issue within Iran's theocracy, with reformists like Pezeshkian pushing for them and hard-liners dismissing them.

The talks would solely focus on nuclear issues, he added.

"Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, will not seek a nuclear weapon and will never stockpile nuclear weapons, but the other side must pay a price in return for this," he said.

Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60 per cent purity, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels. The International Atomic Energy Agency had said Iran was the only country in the world to enrich to that level that wasn't armed with the bomb.

Iran has been refusing requests by the IAEA to inspect the sites bombed in the June war.

"The quantity of enriched uranium remains unknown, because part of the stockpile is under rubble, and there is no initiative yet to extract it, as it is extremely dangerous," Shamkhani said. (AP) RUK RUK