TEHRAN, 3 June 2003 — Iran yesterday hit back at US allegations that it has failed to crack down on fugitive Al-Qaeda members, calling on Washington to apologize to the world for its own past support of the network.
“The Americans should present a full apology to the international community for the support they gave to Al-Qaeda,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. The official was referring to a period in the 1980s when millions of dollars of covert US aid was channeled - through the Pakistani secret service — to Islamist groups battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Much of the cash went to Mujahedeen groups, which included a network of Arab volunteers — the most prominent of whom was Osama Bin Laden.
Some of these volunteers later emerged as Al-Qaeda (meaning “The Base” in Arabic), a network that took its name from the safe houses set up for Arab volunteers in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. The United States was also largely sympathetic — and on some occasions supportive — to the Taleban after the militia emerged in 1994, and even after the militia gave Bin Laden safe haven from 1996.
That often-confused US policy only shifted significantly after the East Africa US Embassy bombings of August 1998 blamed on Al-Qaeda. Given the background of Al-Qaeda, Asefi reiterated that the network’s “violent ideology is the total opposite of that of the Islamic republic”.
US officials have alleged that Iran-based Al-Qaeda operatives were behind the May 12 suicide attacks in Riyadh, and have piled massive pressure on Iran to crack down on the group. Following the Riyadh blasts, which cost nine US lives, fingers were pointed at Egyptian-born Saif Al-Adel, thought to have taken over as Al-Qaeda’s No. 3. Adel, who is in his late 30s, is also wanted in connection with the Aug. 7, 1998, bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
