TEHRAN, 18 August 2003 — Iran has foiled a number of attacks which Al-Qaeda had been planning to carry out on its soil, the official IRNA news agency quoted a senior Iranian official as saying yesterday. “Their (Al-Qaeda’s) plans for a wide range of terrorist acts inside Iran were neutralized by our intelligence organisations,” IRNA quoted Hassan Rohani, secretary-general of the Supreme National Security Council, as saying.

Rohani gave no details of the planned attacks or whether any Al-Qaeda members linked to them were arrested. Although a staunch political enemy of Washington, Iran condemned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States which were blamed on Al-Qaeda and was fiercely opposed to the rule of Al-Qaeda’s former sponsors, the Taleban, in neighboring Afghanistan.

But the Islamic Republic has acknowledged that its extensive eastern border with Afghanistan is hard to police and some fleeing Al-Qaeda members may have been able to slip into the country.

Iran says it has arrested a number of Al-Qaeda members in recent months, including some senior figures in Osama Bin Laden’s organization. But it has declined to name who it has caught and says it will not hand them over to US officials for questioning.

Intelligence sources and media reports suggest Iran may be holding Saad Bin Laden, a son of the Al-Qaeda leader as well as Al-Qaeda’s security chief Egyptian Saif Al Adel and its Kuwaiti-born spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, among others. Washington has in the past accused Iran of sheltering Al-Qaeda and said members of Bin Laden’s network in Iran may have planned the May 12 bombings in Riyadh which killed 35 people.

Tehran accuses Washington of double standards on terrorism and called on it to deal with the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) — an Iranian opposition group based in Iraq which has long been termed “terrorist” by the US State Department.

The State Department on Friday announced the Washington offices of two organizations linked to the MEK — the National Council of Resistance of Iran and the People’s Mujahideen of Iran — had been closed down. Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi welcomed the US move against MEK as a “positive step”. But Kharrazi also called on Washington to take action against MEK fighters in Iraq.