WASHINGTON (AP) — Five former secretaries of state, gathering to give their best advice to the next president, agreed Monday that the United States should talk to Iran, the Associated Press reported.

The wide-ranging, 90-minute session in a packed auditorium at The George Washington University, produced exceptional unity among Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Warren Christopher, Henry A. Kissinger and James A. Baker III.They did not agree on who should move into the White House next January. Albright and Christopher are Democrats, the others Republicans.Albright surprised no one by endorsing Democrat Barack Obama to replace Republican George W. Bush. ""It would be sending a message of diversity"" to the world, she said, drawing cheers from an audience of dozens of diplomats and hundreds of students.Baker said he wished to send a ""powerful message"" to America as well as abroad. After a dramatic pause, he evoked applause and some laughter by saying tersely, ""But I am for John McCain.""Powell, the first black secretary of state, said he had not decided yet. ""I am an American first,"" Powell said.He said he had told Obama, ""I am not going to vote for you just because you are black."" The critical issue, he said, ""is who is going to keep us safe.""The Bush administration has dragged its feet on even minimal contact with Iran under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a course the five former secretaries of state implicitly criticized.Nor did they suggest the United States should keep its distance out of concern for Israel.""The military options are very poor,"" Christopher said. ""And we have to tell the Israelis that.""Kissinger, for his part, said he favored negotiations with Iran, but the United States should spell out its objectives at the outset. And that, he said, included a stable Middle East.Kissinger was secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations from 1973-1977.Albright said if she were secretary of state, she would begin the talks at the State Department level. ""You need to engage with countries you have problems with,"" she said.Secretary of state in the President Bill Clinton's administration from 1997-2001, she said, ""The more we criticize Ahmadinejad the stronger he gets"" within Iranian society.As the five former secretaries cruised through world issues, they hewed to a line that the United States had to project its standing but also to work with other countries.Christopher, who preceded Albright in the Clinton administration, serving from 1993-1997, offered the proposition, though, that the United States should outlaw torture of captured terror suspects.And Powell, who served President George W. Bush from 2001-2005, sought to allay suspicions that Russia was turning into a second Soviet Union, even though it acted ""brutally"" in its conflict last month with Georgia.It was ""foolhardy,"" he said, for Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to ""light a match"" with a military operation in South Ossetia to reassert forcibly his authority over the breakaway region.And Baker, secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush from 1989-1992, said he did not think ""there is a deal to be struck"" between Israel and the Palestinians. But he said the United States should get on good terms with Syria when there is a better chance for a deal. ""It's ridiculous for us to say we are not going to talk to Syria,"" he said.