BAKU, 7 August 2004 — Iranian President Mohammad Khatami yesterday said the United States was using double standard in its war in Iraq and accused it of sparking interethnic conflict. Addressing the Azeri Parliament on the second day of his visit to the former Soviet republic, Khatami defended both Iraq and Palestinian territories against the West.
“Unilateral international policies followed by double standard create difficulties among people, and this can be seen in Iraq and Palestine,” Khatami said. “The Islamic religion allows for peace and security in the region and a true dialogue for between the world’s civilizations,” he said.
Khatami was paying the first visit by an Iranian leader to the former Soviet republic since 1993, trying to build ties between two countries embroiled in a dispute over oil access in the Caspian Sea and Azerbaijan’s closer recent relations with the United States. Khatami is due to leave Azerbaijan today.
In recent months, the Pentagon has been ramping up its military assistance to Azerbaijan, which, like Iran, has a Caspian shoreline. The US military has run joint exercises with the Azeri Navy in the Caspian.
Khatami said the two Muslim countries had a historic obligation to move closer together. Tehran is known to be unhappy about the Western orientation chosen by Azerbaijan, an oil-rich former Soviet republic on Iran’s northern border, and is also uneasy about a growing US military presence in the country.
After several hours of talks in the Azeri capital between Khatami and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, the Iranian leader made no public mention of any discord but hinted that relations could be better. “History and geography have tied our fates together,” Khatami told reporters.
“That puts a big responsibility on us to move closer in the future. We have a common culture and religion. Our borders make our security a shared concern.” Khatami added: “The Iran-Azerbaijan border is a border of peace and friendship. We consider the security of Azerbaijan as important as our own. Both leaders have a strong will to develop relations.” According to analysts, Azerbaijan is caught in the middle of a tussle between Iran and the United States for influence in the strategically-important region around the Caspian Sea.
Meanwhile, influential former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani warned the United States yesterday that its two-day offensive in the Iraqi Shiite holy city of Najaf might prompt suicide bombings. “Every day you bomb, kill, jail, torture and destroy the homes of people in Palestine and in Iraq,” Rafsanjani told worshipers at the Friday prayers in Tehran.
“Just yesterday for the second time, you bombed the city of Najaf and targeted the mausoleum of Imam Ali,” he said, referring to the city’s holiest shrine. “There are angry, hurt and faithful people who are ready to sacrifice and blow themselves up to fight against tyrants,” Rafsanjani warned. “Millions of hearts are bleeding,” Rafsanjani said.
Rafsanjani, who now chairs the Expediency Council — Iran’s final arbiter of legislation — again mocked the rationale for last year’s US-led invasion of Iraq. “They came to become the king of oil and take as much cheap crude as they want from wells in the Persian Gulf but they ended up doubling the oil price from $23 a barrel to $44 to $45,” he said.
