TEHRAN, 15 April 2004 — The United States has made a formal request to Iran to help ease mounting violence in Iraq and Tehran is now making an effort to mediate in the conflict, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said yesterday.
“There has been a lot of correspondence. Regarding Iraq, there has also been a lot of exchanges of correspondence,” Kharrazi told reporters when asked of the current state of relations with the United States.
“Naturally, there was a request for our help in improving the situation in Iraq and solving the crisis, and we are making efforts in this regard,” the minister said after a Cabinet meeting.
He added that exchanges of written communications between Washington and Tehran continued to be made through the Swiss Embassy here, asserting that there was no direct contact between the two arch-enemies.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher flatly denied Kharrazi’s implication that the United States had requested Iranian intervention. He, however, admitted that Washington had sent messages to Tehran “recently” urging them to play a constructive role in Iraq and reiterated longstanding US concerns about Iran’s role there, particularly in the south.
But a senior State Department official said the US gave its blessing to a British invitation to Iran to send a diplomatic team to Iraq in a bid to calm the volatile security situation.
“They were invited by the British,” the official said. “Obviously, we did not object.”
The official said Washington had not asked London to extend the invitation but added that the United States hoped the Iranians would be helpful in ending the standoff.
Iran and the US cut off diplomatic ties after the 1979 Islamic revolution, which saw the US Embassy in Tehran taken over by radical students and its staff held hostage for 444 days.
“We have had negotiations in the past but they were stopped. We are of the sentiment that these negotiations are pointless, because the Americans make promises but do not keep them,” Kharrazi said.
He also asserted that a regular forum of Iraq’s neighbors — Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey plus Egypt — remained the best mechanism for advising the US on its presence in Iraq.
Kharrazi’s comments came after the official news agency IRNA said a top Foreign Ministry official had been sent to Iraq yesterday for talks with coalition officials, Iraqi politicians and religious figures.
The Foreign Ministry’s director for Gulf affairs, Hossein Sadeghi, arrived in the Iraqi capital to “examine events there and to look into finding the means to solve the crisis,” IRNA said.
Nevertheless, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday made a bitter denunciation of the US-led occupation.
“The United States accuses other countries of intervening in Iraq and provoking the Iraqis, but it is perfectly clear that the crimes committed by the occupying forces and their insulting behavior towards Iraqi youth and women are the cause of the Iraqi reaction, whether Sunni or Shiite,” Khamenei said in a speech broadcast on state television.
He said US actions in Iraq were “contrary to all humanitarian principles and are destined to fail.
“Sooner or later, the Americans will be obliged to leave Iraq in shame and humiliation.”
Iran has been fiercely critical of the US-led occupation of its neighbor but has kept its distance from Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr — who has been leading an uprising against coalition forces.
But on Monday, the head of US Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid, charged that Iran, along with Syria, had been involved in “unhelpful actions” in Iraq.
Abizaid declined to elaborate on what the “unhelpful actions” were, but said the US military had not taken any specific action along the border between Iran and Iraq.
He added there were “elements” in Iran that were trying to limit the influence of Sadr. “With regard to the Iranians there are elements within Iran that are urging patience and calm and trying to limit the influence of Sadr,” he said.
