It’s hard to feel good about being a Good Samaritan when the beneficiary acts like this: Iran says time not right for high-level US mission, more gestures needed.

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran’s foreign ministry said the time was not yet right to receive a high-level US delegation and urged Washington to clarify its policy and make further gestures of goodwill so a resumption of dialogue could be considered.

“The time for such a visit has not yet come,” foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters, referring to a US offer to send a top delegation to discuss relief for victims of the December 26 earthquake in the southeastern city of Bam.

In addition to sending aid supplies and a medical team, Washington approached Tehran after the quake about the possibility of sending a delegation headed by top Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole.

The United States, which severed ties with Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution, also suggested that a member of President George W. Bush’s family might accompany Dole to show the importance he places on relief for the victims of the quake, which killed some 30,000 people.

But Asefi said the visit “was not on the cards”.

“If the dominant view in the American leadership is to break the wall of suspicion and they practically move in this direction, there will be another climate,” he told reporters.

“But in recent days we have heard different voices, so by consequence it is difficult to judge. It is not clear if this gesture is isolated or not,” he added.

“The US knows what it has to do. Political and humanitarian questions should not be mixed.”