WASHINGTON, Jan 2: Iran has for the moment rejected a US proposal to send a high-level humanitarian delegation to its "axis of evil" foe in the tragic aftermath of the Bam earthquake, the State Department said.

"We have heard back from the Iranians, that given the current situation in Bam and all that is going on there now, it would be preferable to hold such a visit in abeyance," said State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli.

"Therefore we are not pursuing this further at the moment." Mr Ereli said that the United States had approached Iran on the subject of the visit after Tehran accepted a US aid shipment to victims of last week's quake.

Any talk of a future mission once the situation in Bam had eased would be "speculation", he said. A senior US official earlier said the delegation would have been headed by Senator Elizabeth Dole, and may have included a member of President George Bush's family.

The official said Elizabeth Dole, former head of the American Red Cross, had asked the State Department to let her travel to Iran with a Red Cross delegation and that her request had been received favourably.

The Washington Post, which first reported the offer citing unidentified US and Iranian officials, said the proposal was presented to Iran on Tuesday. The senior official stressed that the mission would be humanitarian and not diplomatic in nature, although the proposal came amid new US overtures to Iran in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Had the Dole mission proceeded, it would have been the first public official US visit to Tehran since the 1979-81 period, when 52 Americans were held hostage in Iran for 444 days and the two countries broke diplomatic relations.

In addition to the offer of assistance last week, the Bush administration on Wednesday temporarily eased restrictions on sending money and sensitive equipment to Iran.

Mr Bush said on Thursday that the moves were a sign of compassion and not a message that he wants warmer ties with Iran, which he labelled as part of an "axis of evil" in 2002.

"What we're doing in Iran is we're showing the Iranian people (that) the American people care, that they've got great compassion for human suffering," the president told reporters in Texas.

And he made clear that if Tehran wanted better relations, it must turn over any followers of Osama bin Laden it has in custody, abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons and "embrace democratic political reform".

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has stressed that any US humanitarian help, while welcome, was not indicative of warming diplomatic relations between the two nations.

Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, on Thursday hailed the easing of sanctions as "positive", but said that only their total lifting would create a new climate between Tehran and Washington. -AFP