U.S. Secretary of States Condoleezza Rice said on Friday that she had a good conversation with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Iran's nuclear issue.

"I did have a conversation with Minister Lavrov. It was a good conversation," Rice told reporters.

Rice said the two sides will still have to negotiate on the draft of a presidential statement on Iran.

"We agreed to ask our negotiators to work again over the next couple of days, really deciding that maybe they won't even have a weekend, because we need to work on this text," Rice said.

The United States has hoped the United Nations Security Council to pass a presidential statement, then pass a much tougher resolution on Iran. However, Russia has been reluctant to see the United Nations Security Council impose sanctions on Iran.

In the U.S. National Security Strategy released last week, U.S. President George W. Bush claimed that the United States faces "no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran."

The Bush administration has insisted that it wants to resolve Iran's nuclear issue through diplomacy.

Source: Xinhua