IRAN yesterday welcomed the lifting of US sanctions on key Iranian non-oil goods, saying Tehran would respond by importing US grain and medicine, the official news agency IRNA reported.
"We welcome (being able) to export Iranian foodstuffs and carpets and see it as positive. In response to this, America will be able to export grain and medicine to . . . Iran," a foreign ministry spokesman, Mr Hamid Reza Asefi, told IRNA.
Mr Asefi was reacting to remarks by the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, who said Washington would allow Americans to purchase and import important Iranian non-oil goods such as carpets, dried fruits, nuts and caviar.
IRNA went on: "The spokesman said there were positive and negative points (in Ms Albright's remarks). On the one hand past accusations are repeated, but on the other (she) has tried to admit America's past mistakes and present a new and different attitude towards the Islamic Republic of Iran." Mr Asefi said the foreign ministry was studying Ms Albright's remarks.
Without apologising, Ms Albright acknowledged past American meddling in Iran, including the CIA-backed coup that toppled Iran's nationalist prime minister, Mohammad Mossadeq, and returned the pro-Western shah to power in 1953.
Ms Albright said Washington would work to resolve existing claims on Iranian assets frozen in the United States after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
She added, however, that Washington remained realistic and continued to harbour deep concerns about Iran's opposition to the Middle East peace process, its desire for weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorism.
"We have no illusions that the United States and Iran will be able to overcome decades of estrangement overnight," Ms Albright told a conference on US-Iran relations sponsored by the American-Iranian Council.
"We can't build a mature relationship on carpets and grain alone, but the direction of our relations is more important than the pace. The US is willing either to proceed patiently on a step-by-step basis or to move very rapidly if Iran indicates a desire and commitment to do so."
She continued: "This step is . . . also designed to show the millions of Iranian craftsmen, farmers and fishermen who work in these industries, and the Iranian people as a whole, that the United States bears them no ill will."
Ms Albright's overture comes in response to the overwhelming victory by reformers over Islamic hardliners in Iran's parliamentary election last month.
The easing of sanctions does not cover 1995 restrictions - extended earlier this week - on Iran's top exports, oil and gas, which provide Tehran with 85 per cent of its foreign exchange.
The extension of those sanctions drew angry responses from Iranian officials, who have demanded concrete changes in US policy towards their country if a dialogue is to begin.
The officials have repeatedly called on the US to release the assets, estimated at billions of dollars by Iran but said to be much less by the US, as a show of good will.
Iran is currently the world's largest wheat importer after a series of droughts cut domestic production.