Prince in quake city during historic trip

Prince Charles was in Iran today, the first member of the royal family to visit the country since the fall of the Shah.

Aides said his visit was "humanitarian" and "totally non-political" but it will inevitably be seen as a move to bolster relations with the strictly Muslim country.

His visit, coming after a moraleboosting six-hour trip to British troops in neighbouring Iraq, shows Britain's determination to improve relations with Tehran's clerical regime.

Charles met Iranian President Mohammad Khatami for talks described as "cordial and warm" before flying to the city of Bam, where an earthquake killed 43,000 people in December.

Clarence House said it was "solely in his capacity as the patron of the British Red Cross to look at the work they are carrying out there".

Like all the Prince's overseas visits, it was made in close consultation with the Foreign Office.

However, today it was unclear whether the Government has sent him on one of his most difficult diplomatic missions so far.

After Iran, Charles is expected to fly to Saudi Arabia as a guest of the ruling royal family. The Prince's Iran visit is a further illustration of the "opening up" of a strict Muslim state which has remained effectively impenetrable by the West for 25 years.

In December, diplomatic leaps were made when the country agreed to allow United Nations inspectors access to its weapons programme. But Iran's relationship with the West and its whole political outlook has lurched from one extreme to the other in the past three decades and is still far from settled.

When the westernised Shah was toppled in 1979, many of Iran's liberal attitudes and policies were quashed by the religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

He returned from exile in France and set about renationalising the country's industries and banks as well as reviving Islamic traditions.

All western influences and music were banned, women had to return to traditional veiled dress and many of the western-thinking elite fled the country.

Relations with the US collapsed when Iranian militants seized the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 people hostage in November 1979.