US President George W. Bush on Thursday extended for one year a range of financial sanctions first imposed on Iran in November 1979, the White House announced.

"Our relations with Iran have not yet returned to normal," Bush said in a letter to the US House of Representatives announcing the move. The original sanctions, imposed by then-president Jimmy Carter, froze assets of Iran's government following the November 1979 take-over of the US embassy in Tehran.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2005