TEHRAN, 20 August 2004 — The Iranian foreign minister has called for an urgent meeting of Iraq’s neighbors to help end the crisis there, the official IRNA agency said yesterday. “It is time for Iraq’s neighbors to contribute to a resolution of the Iraq crisis,” Kamal Kharrazi was quoted as saying during a telephone conversation with his Jordanian counterpart, Marwan Moasher.

Kharrazi described the situation as critical, saying that Iraq’s neighbors must do something to end the violence and protect the country’s holy sites. Four other countries neighbor Iraq, besides Iran and Jordan: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey.

Their foreign ministers have had a number of meetings since the US-led invasion that toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in March last year. They last met in Cairo on July 21 to discuss the new Iraqi interim government’s pleas for help in restoring security to the ravaged nation.

Kharrazi also warned US troops against entering the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, where US-led forces have been laying siege to Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr, as this would be seen as a provocation by Muslims.

Meanwhile, former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani compared the situation in Najaf to the devastation of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by US atomic bombs in 1945. “The American bombardment of the holy city of Najaf will stay in the world’s memory, especially that of Muslims, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” IRNA quoted him as saying yesterday, during a meeting with former Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto.

Kharrazi said that the Iranian diplomat and a journalist missing in Iraq are safe and sound. Iranian diplomat Fereydun Jahani and a reporter of the state news agency IRNA named Mostafa Darban “are in a healthy state”, the state television report quoted the foreign minister as saying.

Jahani went missing on Aug. 4 on the road leading from Baghdad to Karbala, in central Iraq, where Tehran was set to open a consulate. His kidnapping was claimed by the Islamic Army of Iraq, which was reported last week to have issued threats against him but is not known to have carried them out.

Kharrazi also said the International Atomic Energy Agency should close the file on allegations that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. “If the case is not closed, it intensifies the suspicion about interference of political motives and pressures within the agency. And this is what the Americans are looking for,” Kharrazi asserted on state television.

“To show its independence, IAEA, as a professional, technical and nonpolitical organization, should naturally insist on its own technical criteria and principles and quickly announce the issues have been resolved, if they have been resolved,” Kharrazi said.