``The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has no intention, nor is it going to take any action whatsoever, to threaten the life of the author of The Satanic Verses or anyone associated with his work,'' Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharazi announced on Thursday.

``The government disassociates itself from any reward offered in this regard and does not support it,'' he said.

The unambiguous statement went further than Khatami's predecessor as President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had ever dared to go.

Rafsanjani often repeated that the $2.5 million bounty on Rushdie's life, offered by the Khordad-15 religious foundation, was a private matter that had nothing to do with the government.

But he never explicitlydissociated the government from the call for Rushdie's death, which was first ordered in February 1989 by Iran's then supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, over alleged blasphemy in the writer's 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses.

Notwithstanding Kharazi's announcement on Thursday, however, the leader of Khordad-15 remains an influential figure in the Islamic republic.

Ayatollah Hassan Sanei is one of the highest ranking religious figures in Iran, and as head of Khordad-15 is appointed directly by the current supreme leader of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Sanei is also a member of the Expediency Council, the highest ruling body in the Iranian regime, which is presided over by Rafsanjani.

Although it is not widely known even in Iran, Sanei is also close politically to Khatami, whom he supported in last year's elections.

This link offers some clue as to why Khatami was better placed than his predecessor to make a definitive statement on the politically sensitiveRushdie affair, even though just last year Sanei personally announced a renewal of the offer on the writer's life.

In distancing his government from the bounty, Khatami reinforces his image as a man disposed toward strong relations with the West, a useful strategy as Iran finds itself in urgent need of Western economic cooperation and investment to deal with its severe economic crisis.

Much of that investment could come from the European Union, which has been particularly outraged by the call for the death of Rushdie, a British subject.

Yet such overtures to the West by the reformist president have been repeatedly opposed by hardline conservatives within the Islamic republic.

Indeed, each year the anniversary of Khomeini's announcement of the fatwa, or religious decree, calling for Rushdie's life has been celebrated with strong public declarations of support for both the death sentence and the late Khomeini, a conservative cleric who founded the republic after the Islamic revolution of1979.

The elite Revolutionary Guards, the backbone of Iran's armed forces, mark the anniversary each year, and the fatwa has often been a rallying point for anti-West sentiment throughout the Muslim world.

As Khatami continues to face fierce opposition at home from conservatives, it is worth noting that neither Kharazi nor the president himself have publicly questioned the religious validity of the fatwa.

Khatami said earlier in the week that he considered the matter ``completely finished'', but for the moment the $2.5 million price tag still hangs on Rushdie's head. And that is likely to give the West a reason to continue its caution.