CBNNews.com - JERUSALEM, Israel - Despite Iran's sworn goal to wipe the State of Israel off the map, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton affirmed the Obama administration's plan to continue reaching out to the Islamic Republic.

An Iranian delegation accepted an invitation to attend a conference on Afghanistan next week The Hague, in The Netherlands.

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

Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejected U.S. President Barack Obama's recent videotaped greeting extended for Norwuz, the Persian New Year, in which he expressed hope to mend 30 years of strained relations between Iran and the U.S.

"We are doing what President Obama said we would do," Clinton said.

"We are reaching out to the Iranian leadership, but equally important, 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.

Source: The Associated Press