U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said her country may engage Syria more since the Assad regime slowed the flow of fighters into Iraq, began indirect talks with Israel and helped end Lebanon's political crisis.

"Nothing is a breakthrough, and I'm not sure that there will be,'' Rice told Bloomberg TV. "But it's time to talk about some of the changes that are taking place in the Middle East."

"There have been some contacts with the Syrians because there are some elements in the Middle East that are moving forward. There is a Lebanese president now…and Syrian forces, of course, are out of Lebanon," she said in an interview broadcast Tuesday night.

"We want the Lebanese to be able to carry out their affairs independent of foreign interference. The fact that they have a president is a good start," she said.

Among the other changes in the region, according to Rice, are the Turkish-mediated Syrian-Israeli talks, which the U.S. supports, and the slowing down of the foreign fighters flow from Syria.

"The Syrians had approached us and said that they wished to talk,'' Rice told the TV station. She met last week with her Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in New York.

However, U.S. relations with Syria still have "a long way to go,'' Rice said. She cited Syria's human rights record and its support for groups the U.S. considers terrorist organizations such as Lebanon's Hizbullah and the Palestinian movement Hamas.

"If Syria were to stop supporting destabilizing elements in the Middle East like Hizbullah, like Hamas, it would certainly help to improve the atmosphere," she said.

She urged the next U.S. administration not to withdraw troops from Iraq on "some kind of artificial timetable'' that doesn't take into account the fragility of improvements there.

"After all that we've sacrificed to have a friendly Iraqi government'' in the midst of the Arab world and a changing Middle East, "it would be really irresponsible to risk that,'' she said.

She also rejected rumors of indirect talks with Iran.