mutt colors in xterm

[dieter . maas]

hi to all,

keeping on tracking, customizing my mutt, my question now is:
how can i teach mutt to use all of my .muttrc inclusive of colors and
keymappings in xterm/XFree86 environment? So far in my xterms, only explicitly
specified bg and fg colors dominate, any colors  from muttrc just dont come
through.
Any solutions, doc-hints welcome(there is a lot of them, seems a bit confusing
to me).  
thanx in advance

Dieter Maas