"Upon the U.S request made last week that Turkey take part in the operations with the U.S. forces in fighting terrorists, and as a result of long meetings, the Turkish government decided to respond positively to Washington's demand, which was conveyed on Oct. 26", an official Turkish statement said.

It was the first time since November 1979 when Iranian revolutionary students stormed the Embassy and took 55 diplomats and guards as hostages for 444 days, that the huge compound was opened to visitors.

Strolling amid some visitors, most of them visibly brought by the organisers and looking tired and uninterested, an Iran Press Service correspondent in Tehran went through rooms marked Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Hiroshima, Nagasaki or Afghanistan, covered with photographs of American "criminal wars" in those countries and elsewhere, including evidences for 68 crimes that America has committed against Iran.

"In one of the rooms of the exhibition, said to be the eavesdropping centre, we were shown a bulky, dusty and ageing eavesdropping machinery that a guide said it used to listen to 10,000 telephone lines at the same time and send coded messages".

An intelligence expert said the most advanced bugging machine in use in Iran at that time could not monitor more than 500 lines.

Then comes a room where documents were powdered or shredded, followed by a room where, according to the guide, passports and license plate numbers were forged.

On entering the exhibition, one would clean his shoes over a doormat bearing the Israeli flag before being invited to pound on an ugly face wearing a hat with the American flag and to shoot balls into Uncle Sam's moving mouth using an air canon. "Bang all your strength on America's head," reads a sign.

A William Sullivan, the last US ambassador in Iran, is seated in a windowless room, " used for confidential meetings, busy plotting against the Islamic revolution", the guide says.

Sitting on a shelf is a fading black and white photo of the White House with a brief message: "To the gang", signed Jimmy, presumably Jimmy Carter whose presidency was haunted by the hostage crisis and the disastrous attempt to rescue them.

Outside, on a football field and tennis courts, were displayed the remnants of the American helicopters that crashed in desert near the north-eastern city of Tabas, in a failed attempt to rescue the American hostages. Next are pictures of the torn bodies of some of the 290 passengers of an Iran Air plane downed in 1988 over the Persian Gulf by a missile fired by An American navy ship.

Mr. Mohammad Shoa’i, an official of the exhibition, said the museum was aimed at teaching young Iranians about the importance of the revolution in ending the US yoke.

"The new generation is not aware of the crimes America has committed against our nation", he said, adding: "We are trying to explain what has happened in the past that led to the revolution, all the miseries America brought to our country and we still are suffering from".

Two-thirds of Iran's 69 million people were born after the revolution, when Iran and the United States severed relations.

"The last generation already knew about the influence of the US in Iran but the new generation has to know more and learn about the history of our revolution", Mr. Shoa’i said, refusing to comment on a question to know the reasons behind the past weeks anti-regime riots by youngsters using Iran’s plays against Arab teams counting for the 2002 World Cup.

Afraid that the football celebrations, held regardless of Iran’s victory or defeat, could go out of control, conservatives hit back, enforced the ban on satellite dishes that allow people to watch and listen to foreign-based Iranian Radio and television stations and ordered reformists not to speak about improving ties with the "great Satan".

Defence Minister Admiral Ali Shamkhani recently warned that the government was ignoring rising anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world and Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, Head of the Judiciary, went even further, declaring that legal action would be taken against those who openly defended direct dialogue with the Americans.

"Our national interests lie with antagonising the Great Satan. We condemn any cowardly stance towards America and any word on compromise with the Great Satan", the Iraq-born cleric said, taking cue from the leader’s warnings to the reformists MMs.

"None of us would participate in such events", Abbas Abdi, one of the masterminds of the embassy seizure told "The New York Times" Nazila Fathi.