Iran says U.S. is not in position for military action against it

Associated Press


TEHRAN, Iran-- Iran's foreign minister said Saturday the United States was in no position for another war, and maintained that negotiations -- not threats -- were the only way to resolve the standoff over its nuclear activities. Manouchehr Mottaki was responding to Vice President Dick Cheney, who renewed Washington's warning to Iran earlier Saturday that "all options" were on the table if Tehran continues to defy U.N. demands to halt uranium enrichment. Mottaki said the U.S. could not afford to settle its differences with Iran by launching a third war after Afghanistan and Iraq. "We do not see America in a position to impose another crisis on its taxpayers inside America by starting another war in the region," Mottaki told reporters. The IAEA report came after Wednesday's deadline of a 60-day grace period for Iran to halt uranium enrichment. Iran has repeatedly refused to halt enrichment as a precondition to negotiations about its program. Mottaki urged the U.S. and its allies to return to dialogue when they are scheduled to meet in London next week."The only way to reach a solution for disputes is negotiations and talks. Therefore, we want the London meeting to make a brave decision and resume talks with Iran," Mottaki said. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate, on Saturday also urged the Bush administration to negotiate directly with Iran. "Saber-rattling is not a good way to get the Iranians to cooperate," Richardson wrote in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post. "But it is a good way to start a new war." Iran, Richardson wrote, "will not end their nuclear program because we threaten them and call them names."


Separately, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said it killed 17 mercenary fighters on its border with Turkey and accused the United States and its allies of seeking to provoke tensions along the country's frontiers. In a statement, the Guards said 17 "counterrevolutionary mercenaries" were killed, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Saturday.
Later Saturday, Iranian state television reported that a Guards' helicopter crashed in the area because of bad weather. It did not say whether anyone had died. The Guards chief, Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, said the U.S., Britain and Israel were seeking to incite tension on Iran's borders to undermine its government, IRNA reported. "Iran's enemies, through hiring some mercenaries and with their wishful thinking, want to create instability but ... the armed forces will strongly suppress anti-revolutionaries and rebels who are dependent to foreigners," Safavi was quoted as saying.

Iraq closes borders with Syria and Iran

BAGHDAD, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Iraq's government said on Tuesday it had closed its borders with Syria and Iran and extended the hours of a night curfew in Baghdad under a U.S.- backed security plan to rein in violence in the capital.The measures ordered by Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki were announced on Iraqiya state television by Lieutenant General Abboud Qanbar, the Iraqi commander who is leading the U.S.-backed security offensive in Baghdad.Qanbar said the border with Iran would be closed for 72 hours. He did not say how long the border with Syria will be closed.


Reading a statement issued in the name of Iraq's cabinet, the general said four Iranian and two Syrian border posts would remain closed for 72 hours, before reopening, but that others would shut indefinitely. The announcement followed two days of bloody bomb attacks in Baghdad and amid accusations by US military commanders that Iran is smuggling weapons to Shiite militias fighting in Iraq's sectarian conflict. Gambar, a 60-year-old Shiite general, has been put in charge of a security plan that will involve dividing Baghdad into 10 districts patrolled by US troops and forces from Iraq's defence and interior ministries. The force, which is slated to rise until it is 60,000-strong, will attempt to root out anti-government insurgents and disarm the illegal militias carrying out sectarian attacks on the city's rival Sunni and Shiite communities.

Anxiety grows on Iran's eastern border

Rumours grow over Iranian interest in Taliban heartlands of southern Afghanistan and tribal regions of Pakistan

TAFTAN, PAKISTAN — You can smell the tension along the Iranian border. A thick stench of rotting fruit and vegetables hangs over market stalls in the border town of Taftan, near the three-way juncture of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.The wild country here on the edge of the Afghan desert has grown notorious as a shipment point for drugs and weapons, a source of worry for all three governments. For years, those concerns rarely interrupted the work of ordinary traders, but last week the Pakistani authorities caught seven Iranians trying to sneak across the border at night, and a squabble ensued over which country had the right to interrogate them.Iran closed its border in protest, and for several days the town was awash with food destined for Iranian shelves, long rows of packing crates crawling with flies.Mullah Zafran, president of the Taftan fruit market, said these interruptions of trade are becoming more frequent. "There is no discipline on the border," he said, bitterly.The scene in Taftan is one of several signs of growing anxiety along Iran's eastern border. The country's western flank has received vastly more attention in recent days, as the United States accuses Iran of helping insurgents in Iraq. But some observers have also started to question Iran's strategy in the Taliban heartlands of southern Afghanistan and the tribal regions of Pakistan.Officially, Tehran remains closely allied with Kabul, having poured more than $200-million (U.S.) into the reconstruction of its war-torn neighbour. Iran's Foreign Minister met with Afghanistan's outgoing ambassador to Tehran on the weekend, praising their warm relations and calling for more economic co-operation.Behind the smiles, however, lies a heated debate. Nearly every Afghan politician criticizes Pakistan for stoking the Taliban insurgency, but they're divided about Iran. Some describe their neighbour as exerting only political and commercial influence, broadcasting anti-American radio and television programs into the country and using predatory business practices to gain control over parts of Afghanistan's economy."They are meddling, for sure," a senior Kabul politician said. "But for now, we can't say they are interfering in the military aspect." In Kandahar, another politician said he believes that Iran supports the Ishaqzai tribal faction within the Taliban. The Afghan politician said he recently met with an Iranian official and challenged him about the rumours, which produced only a shrug from the Iranian."He said, 'What should we do? If we knew that the United States would behave like this, we would not have opposed the Taliban at first,' " the politician said.Support for the Taliban would be a major reversal for the Shia government in Iran, which nearly went to war with the Sunni Taliban regime over the killing of seven Iranian diplomats in 1998. Iran continued to give weapons and other assistance to the Taliban's enemies in northern Afghanistan until the regime was overthrown.But the arrival of foreign soldiers in Afghanistan brought new concerns for Tehran, especially as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization increases its troop strength in provinces near the Iranian border. NATO's chief of staff in southern Afghanistan, Canadian Colonel Mike Kampman, responded cautiously when asked about Iran's response."You put all this in the larger international atmosphere, or environment, and you can imagine the tensions of any sort of Western presence that gets close to that border," Col. Kampman said.Lieutenant-General Rahmatullah Raoufi, southern regional commander for the Afghan army, said he hasn't seen any firm indications that Iran backs the insurgency. "We don't have any evidence," he said. "We just don't know." A few hints — rumours, mostly — suggest the Iranians may have established links with the insurgents.A 22-year-old Taliban fighter from Maywand district, west of Kandahar, was shot in the chest during a fight with NATO troops in September, and dragged off the battlefield by his comrades.He returned home several months later, with his wounds healed, and told his neighbours that the Taliban took him for treatment to a hospital in Tehran."He kept talking about the Iranian nurses," said a neighbour, who feared for his life if he told the story publicly. "He said, 'They were really beautiful, and I wish I could speak Persian.' " A Taliban source said he knows of opium barons who have dramatically increased their regular cash payments to insurgent leaders in Quetta, Pakistan. The payments are protection money, paid by drug dealers whose smuggling routes are guarded by Taliban fighters. Those routes often run across the Iranian border, and the Taliban source speculated that somebody inside Iran is putting cash in the drug convoys for delivery to the insurgents.(A low-ranking Western intelligence staffer also said Iran is funding the Taliban, but offered no details.)A Taliban fighter in Kandahar, however, was skeptical about the Iranian support. "We get some Kalashnikovs from Iran, but we have to pay for them," he said. "If they want to help us, they should give them free." Free or not, Iranian weapons have been reported on the battlefields of Panjwai district, where Canadian troops recently fought insurgents.Gul Mohammed, a villager from Sangisar, about 40 kilometres west of Kandahar city, said Taliban fighters burned his cousin's home and stole two Russian-made Kalashnikovs during the fighting in his village this summer. He approached the fighters on his cousin's behalf, he said, asking them to give the weapons back. Many households in Afghanistan are stocked with assault rifles for personal protection, and Mr. Mohammed argued with the Taliban that his cousin needed the weapons to protect his family.The insurgents were reluctant to give back the Russian rifles, which are prized in Afghanistan for their quality. Instead, the fighters offered Mr. Mohammed two rifles they described as "Iranian Kalashnikovs," shorter weapons with two grey plastic pistol-grips and folding metal stocks. His description sounded closer to the Hungarian AMD-65 than any Iranian rifle, but the insurgents said the weapons and ammunition were both supplied by Iran."The guns were new," Mr. Mohammed said. "The black paint was very shiny." Such claims are difficult to verify; Afghanistan has issued AMD-65s to some police officers, and deep corruption in the country's law enforcement means that police weapons often wind up in the hands of insurgents.In fact, the Afghan police officer who stood guard outside Iran's consulate in Kandahar last week was carrying the same weapon, a weathered AMD-65.Inside the ornate building, in an office decorated with hundreds of tiny mirrors and a portrait of Ayatollah Khomaini, the head of Iran's reconstruction efforts in southern Afghanistan shook his head scornfully when asked whether Iranian weapons are being used by the Taliban."It's impossible," said Sheik Hossein Zeineddin, director of the Iranian Council in Kandahar. "We are working in a very transparent way." Echoing the arguments made by Pakistani authorities, however, Mr. Zeineddin added that it's difficult for Iran to stop insurgents from crossing the expanses of open terrain that form his country's border with Afghanistan."We have a 900-kilometre border with Afghanistan," he said. "Who can control every kilometre?" But the problems with the border are less of a threat to Afghanistan than to Iran, Mr. Zeineddin added, because the Western allies now operating in the region are trying to make trouble for his country.He alleged that British forces are using the drug dealers in Helmand province for espionage against Iran: "They are gathering information, visiting, making connections, watching us."At the same time, Mr. Zeineddin said, the United States and Pakistan are supporting the Baloch tribes in their separatist insurgency in southeastern Iran."They are raising the Baloch against us," he said, even suggesting that NATO operates training camps for Baloch fighters inside Afghanistan.A gracious man, wearing a suit jacket and speaking fluent English, Mr. Zeineddin said his suspicions about the Western powers haven't stopped him from pursuing a humanitarian mission in southern Afghanistan. Some of the initiatives he described, such as subsidizing Ariana Afghan Airlines' regular flights to Tehran, and training 300 literacy teachers as Persian-language instructors, seemed designed to extend Iran's influence in this Pashto-speaking area.But he also gave a long list of other Iranian projects that appeared to support NATO's goal of rebuilding the country: a trade school, a sports centre, a women's clinic, a library, a soccer pitch, renovations for an orphanage and several others.The frustration of trying to implement these projects with the Afghan government — money gone missing, and Afghan officials refusing to take responsibility for their work — shows why insurgent groups such as the Taliban don't require help from outside the country, he said."Now, there's so much corruption, no wonder the people go back to the Taliban," Mr. Zeineddin said.