Embedded integration

Hello, I'm trying to find some forum software that I can 'embed' into a specialized sports news site I'm developing. The two main things I'd like the software to handle is users and topics. With users, I'm looking for editable profiles, private messaging, buddy lists, registration w/ verification, password retrieval, etc.

With topics, I'd like to have your typical forum view, but each news article is to have its own topic on that very article page. So I need to be able to create a new topic or thread programmatically when the article is entered by a site administrator and I need to be able to include that singe topic on that page along with a reply section. And this thread may or may not be visible in the regular forum. This could be accomplished by a simple guestbook script, but I'd like to leverage the features that come with user profiles and functions. And I'd like to not maintain a forum and a guestbook.

Can I do that with this forum?

Thanks!