Positive powers of the mass parameter in a physical quantity calculated with
the help of heavy quark effective theory originate from a Wilson coefficient in
the matching of QCD and HQET Green function. We show that this mass parameter
enters the calculation as a well--defined running current mass. We further
argue that the recently found ill--definition of the pole mass, which is the
natural expansion parameter of HQET, does not affect a phenomenological
analysis which uses truncated perturbative series. We reanalyse inclusive
semileptonic decays of heavy mesons and obtain the c quark mass
mcMS(mc)=(1.35±0.20)GeV where the error
is almost entirely due to scale--uncertainties. We also obtain
mbMS(mb)=(4.6±0.3)GeV and
∣Vcb∣(τB/1.49ps)1/2=0.036±0.005 where the errors come
from the uncertainty in the kinetic energy of the heavy quark inside the meson,
in the experimental branching ratios, in QCD input parameters, and
scale--uncertainties.Comment: 21 p., 5 figs, all style files incl., TUM-T31-56/R (Sec. 2 revised,
phenomenological results unchanged