Iran has accepted an invitation to a conference on Afghanistan next week at The Hague, Netherlands, that also will be attended by the U.S.

U.S. State Department officials have said no substantive meetings are planned between the U.S. and the Iranians.

But Clinton reaffirmed U.S. hopes that Iran will help in stabilizing Afghanistan.

“Iran borders Afghanistan,” she said. “It has a role to play in the region and we hope it will be a constructive role.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejected Obama’s outreach, saying Tehran was still waiting to see concrete changes in U.S. policy. Obama spoke out to Iran on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian new year, and expressed hopes for an improvement in nearly 30 years of strained relations. Clinton said those efforts will continue.

“We are doing what President Obama said we would do. We are reaching out to the Iranian leadership, but equally importantly, to the Iranian people. That was certainly the spirit in which the president extended new year’s greetings,” she said.

“We have a long-held view that there are going to be difficult obstacles to engaging in the short run with the Iranians, but we are going to continue to reach out,” she said.

From Fox News

“The number of deaths was unclear, with reports indicating between 14 and 21 people — mostly militants — killed in Thursday’s attack on the suspected Taliban training camp in the Kurram area. The number injured ranged from fewer than 10 to more than 40.” UPI News

“The drone fired two Hellfire missiles on a house where a number of militants were residing. Most of the victims were local tribal, Afghan Taliban and foreign militants,” an official in the town of Sadda told the Inter-Asian News Service.