Obama, Ahmadinejad will not meet

President Barack Obama will not sit down with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while they are both in New York next week for a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, one U.S. official said Friday.

However, the White House was less clear about whether the U.S. delegation would remain the room when Ahmadinejad addresses the 192-member body, or how the president would react if he was approached by Iranian delegates.

"With respect to the Iranian leader, I don't think there's much likelihood that there will be an interaction," said Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "There's no obvious venue in which that would occur, and certainly we have no meetings or anything of the sort planned."

"I don't want to presage or guess what they might say, or what will be the appropriate response.  That's in the realm of the hypothetical," she added.

Iran's nuclear program returned to headlines this week in part because new reports indict the state for continuing its nuclear program. Ahmadinejad, however, has dismissed those allegations, and asserted his state would continue developing nuclear energy.