REUTERS

TEHRAN, Iran, April 18 - Conciliatory remarks by President Bill Clinton towards Iran have revived a heated debate over ending two decades of hostilities with the United States. In the latest sign that Washington was slowly moving toward improved relations with its one-time bitter enemy, Clinton said last week that Iran had been subject to “quite a lot of abuse from various Western countries” in the past, and should be told it had a right to be angry.

REFORMIST ALLIES of President Mohammad Khatami, eager to speed up rapprochement with the West and normalize trade relations, played up his remarks, saying they marked a “new phase” away from adversarial sentiment and calling for a revision of policies.

1979 REVOLUTION

Relations soured after the 1979 Islamic revolution which toppled the pro-American shah, and were broken after Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran taking its staff hostage. The two countries have been at sharp odds ever since.

“The world is changing. In politics, one must not see things in black and white,” said Mohammad Reza Khatami, the president’s brother and head of a reformist political organization.

“All countries make revisions in their policies based on their national interests. We, too, must be able to move along our interests, and not our emotions,” he added.

Iranian moderates hope an end to U.S. hostility may boost Khatami’s political standing and help ease the country’s economic ills, the greatest challenge facing the president, by paving the way for an end to U.S. economic sanctions against Iran.

Restored relations, they know, would also be hugely popular with many ordinary Iranians who continue to view the American people, if not the U.S. government, warmly.

LETTER TO CLINTON

Provincial governors throughout Iran, all moderates appointed by Khatami’s administration, sent a letter to the president congratulating him over Clinton’s comments.

“Clinton’s explicit admission and recognition of the rights of our great nation... is another major international success for the Islamic republic,” they said.

But Khatami’s hard-line rivals, strongly opposed to relations with the United States, have rejected Clinton’s remark as a ruse to secure renewed political and economic influence in Iran.

Jomhuri-ye Eslami, a conservative newspaper, said on Sunday it was alarmed by “suspicious efforts” by the reformist camp to play up Clinton’s comments.

“There is a line of propaganda here to portray Clinton’s pale remarks as a big success which will pave the way for restoration of ties,” it said. “But the truth is that Washington is not and never has been interested in giving up its inhuman stance against the Islamic republic.”

The conflicting views reflect Iranians’ ambivalent feeling toward the United States, which commanded overwhelming influence in Iran up to the Islamic revolution.

While many Iranians associate the United States with the economic prosperity and social, if not political, freedom which they believe they enjoyed before 1979, others blame it for much of the wrong committed against the country in the past century.