US warms to Iran's new president

The United States has formally welcomed remarks from President Mohammad Khatami of Iran, that he wants greater people-to-people contact between their countries.

A State Department spokesman in Washington said the tone of Mr Khatami's remarks, at a news conference last month and in an American television interview on Wednesday, was encouraging, and that what he'd said would be carefully evaluated.

Relations were broken off after the Iranian revolution and the take-over, in 1980, of the American embassy in Teheran.

President Khatami avoided proposing any contact at government level but a leading American newspaper, the Washington Post, says the Clinton Administration suggested official talks, in a message through the Swiss ambassador in Teheran, after Mr Khatami took over in August.

There's been no official response to the newspaper report.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service