The Iranian President, Mr Mohammad Khatami, called for dialogue with the United States in a CNN interview last night but said there remained a gulf of mistrust. "Nothing should prevent dialogue and understanding between our two nations," he said in the interview, but added: "There is a great mistrust between us."
"If negotiations are not based on mutual respect they will never lead to positive results," he said in the first address by an Iranian leader to the US since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
"There must first be a crack in this wall of mistrust to prepare for a change and to create an opportunity to study a new situation.
"Unfortunately the behaviour of the American government in the past . . . has always exacerbated this climate of mistrust and we have so far not detected any sign of change of behaviour," he said.
Earlier, the White House said it would closely monitor the historic television address for a possible offer of dialogue from Tehran.
"We've made it clear that we would welcome an authorised, transparent dialogue," the White House spokesman Mr Mike McCurry said, in an apparent reference to rifts in the Iranian leadership on whether to seek closer ties with the US.
"We will be listening very carefully to the interview," he said, adding: "We would know a proposal for an authorised dialogue when we saw it. If there were such a dialogue, we've made clear the issues that we would put first and foremost on the agenda."
Washington has remained hostile towards Tehran, accusing Iran of sponsoring international terrorism, of violently opposing peace with Israel and of seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Washington broke off diplomatic relations in April 1980 after 52 Americans were taken hostage at the US embassy in Tehran by Islamic revolutionaries. They were held captive for over a year.