Iran welcomes Obama appeal but wants action

Iran on Friday welcomed US President Barack Obama's olive branch to Tehran but urged him to take concrete steps to repair mistakes that have frozen ties between the two nations for three decades.

"We welcome the wish of the president of the United States to put away past differences," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's press adviser Ali Akbar Javanfekr said in reaction to Obama's message at Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, in which he urged a resolution of differences and an "honest" engagement.

"But the way to do that is not by Iran forgetting the previous hostile and aggressive attitude of the United States," he said. "The American administration has to recognise its past mistakes and repair them."

The United States made another gesture on Friday, saying it had a set of next steps planned to encourage dialogue with the Islamic republic.

"Without getting into what next, obviously there will need to be some evaluation overall with our policies," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters in Washington.

Prodded as to whether a "step two" had already been gamed out on paper, Gibbs added: "There is, and there are many more, but none of which I am going to get into today."

In Istanbul on the sidelines of the World Water Forum, Iranian Energy Minister Parviz Fattah also said that Obama's message needed to be followed up by actions.

"The Iranian leaders will precisely assess this message. We believe that we need that in addition to messages we need positive action from Mr Obama as well as from his government," he said.

Javanfekr told AFP that Obama has "not taken any concrete steps to repair the mistakes committed against Iran... If Obama shows willingness to take action, the Iranian government will not show its back to him."

He said Iran wanted to end the "animosities" between the two countries which have had no diplomatic relations since 1980, a year after Iran became an Islamic republic following the toppling of the US-backed shah.

European Union leaders expressed hope that Obama's message would mark a "new chapter" in relations with Tehran.

"I think it is a very constructive message," said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who has led often fruitless nuclear negotiations with Tehran on behalf of major world powers.

"I hope very much that Tehran will act intelligently," he told reporters at an EU summit in Brussels.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy welcomed the "rather good news," adding that France and other countries had been "waiting for years for the Americans to re-engage in the Iranian issue."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed: "I believe that President Obama's message reflects exactly the message that Europeans have been trying to send to Iran."

Washington-Tehran ties worsened further under former US president George W. Bush who refused to talk to Iran following the launch of its nuclear programme and lumped the Islamic republic as part of an "axis of evil."

Iranian officials regularly refer to Washington as the "Great Satan."

"The start of substantive dialogue will facilitate the revival of trust in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme," Moscow's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.







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